LORD    BEACONSFIELD. 


THE 


POLITICAL    ADVENTURES 


OF 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD. 


NEW    YORK: 
CHARLES     SCRIBNER'S     SONS, 

743  AND  745  BROADWAK. 


PUBLISHERS'     NOTE. 


THE  remarkable  papers  here  reprinted  ap- 
peared anonymously  in  the  Fortnightly  Review 
at  the  moment  when  the  career  of  their  sub- 
ject reached  its  apparent  climax.  The  fact  that 
recent  events  have  made  Lord  Beaconsfield  for 
the  time  a  central  figure  in  European  politics, 
has  called  a  more  than  national  attention  to 
this  brilliant  and  incisive  analysis ;  and  the  same 
fact  gives  a  sufficient  reason  for  its  republication 
in  America,  even  while — for  the  public  at  least 
• — the  question  of  its  authorship  is  still  unsolved. 


THE  POLITICAL  ADVENTURES  OF 


LORD  BEACONSFIELD. 


I. 

LORD  BEACONSFIELD 's  career  has  been  reviewed 
at  different  stages  of  it  by  many  able  critics  and 
biographers  variously  affected  to  their  subject.  Per- 
haps the  time  has  now  come  when  it  may  be  expe- 
dient to  take  another  survey  of  it.  Lord  Beacons- 
field  has  reached  a  point  beyond  which  it  is  not 
constitutionally  possible  that  he  should  pass.  He 
cannot  be  more  than  Prime  Minister  of  England  and 
a  peer  of  the  realm.  Whatever  be  the  duration  of 
his  premiership  and  his  parliamentary  life,  his  career 
will  simply  be  continued  ;  it  can  scarcely  have  new 
features.  The  point  will  be  lengthened  into  a  line, 
and  that  is  all.  The  record  is  not  closed,  but  there 


8  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

cannot  be  much  to  add  to  it  of  a  kind  likely  to  affect 
its  general  character  or  the  public  judgment.  Lord 
Beaconsfield  has  been  the  subject  of  bitter  attack  and 
of  unscrupulous  praise.  His  career  has  been  de- 
scribed as  demoralising  to  the  national  character,  and 
as  lowering  the  standard  and  aims  of  English  poli 
tics.  We  should  say  that  it  is  rather  unmoralising 
than  demoralising.  We  are,  at  any  rate,  not  con- 
scious of  depraving  influences  as  the  result  of  a  con- 
tinuous survey  of  it ;  its  effects  seem  to  be  merely 
privative.  Lord  Beaconsfield  appears  somehow  01 
other  to  be  outside  the  sphere  of  moral  judgment. 
You  do  not,  as  a  too  indulgent  critic  said  of  the 
dramatists  of  the  Restoration,  get  into  a  world  in 
which  considerations  of  right  and  wrong  have  no 
place,  but  you  see  introduced  into  the  affairs  of 
the  ordinary  world  a  creature  to  whom  apparently 
these  considerations  do  not  apply.  Like  the  Sor- 
cerer, in  Mr.  Gilbert's  play,  he  moves  about  taking 
part  in  all  that  concerns  men's  businesses  and  bo- 
Boms,  wearing  the  dress,  speaking  the  language,  using 
the  slang,  and  not  exempt  from  the  other  vulgarities 
of  ordinary  life.  Still  you  feel  that  he  has  come  from 
another  world,  and  that  he  is  to  be  judged  by  the  law 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  9 

of  his  domicile,  wherever  that  may  be,  rather  than  by 
the  rule  according  to  which  Englishmen  pass  moral 
sentence  upon  each  other.  Robin  Goodfellow,  or 
the  Elfin  King,  or  any  other  weird  or  graceful  crea- 
ture of  extra-natural  superstition,  seems  to  have  as 
much  connection  with  our  prosaic  world  as  the  Earl 
of  Beaconsfield.  If  some  fine  day  he  should  cast 
aside  his  peer's  robes,  and  the  dull  vesture  of  decay 
which  seems  to  hem  him  in  less  closely  and  more  in- 
congruously than  it  sits  upon  other  men,  and  if  he 
should  appear  in  a  blaze  of  light  as  the  Genius  of 
the  Gardens  of  Joy,  or  descend  in  red  fire  through  a 
trap-door,  the  transformation  would  not  appear  more 
strange  or  theatrical  than  many  incidents  of  his  his- 
tory. On  the  whole,  we  are  not  disposed  to  think 
that  Lord  Beaconsfield  has  done  as  much  harm  to 
political  morality  as  might  be  thought  likely.  People 
have  declined  to  think  of  political  morality  in  con- 
nection with  him ;  they  have  found  it  impossible  to 
associate  the  two  ideas,  and  therefore  it  has  escaped 
injury  or  deterioration.  He  has  done  most  mischief 
by  the  sort  of  charm  which  he  has  exercised  over 
creatures  of  a  different  sphere.  He  has  tempted  un- 
gainly mortals  of  respectable  character,  successful 


10  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

parliamentary  lawyers,  and  squires  moulded  out  of 
their  own  heavy  clays,  to  imitate  his  wanton  and 
sportive  gambols  with  a  result  to  which  no  ^sopian 
fable  can  do  justice.  He  has  done  Sir  William  Har- 
court  and  Mr.  Henry  Chaplin  much  harm.  On  the 
other  hand,  he  has  been  of  some  use  to  the  British 
public.  He  has  helped  to  prevent  them  from  taking 
life  and  politics  too  ponderously ;  he  has  stimulated 
their  sense  of  wonder,  and  applied  incentives  to  the 
somewhat  slow  and  feeble  imagination  of  a  rather 
dull  and  prosaic  community.  From  the  beginning 
Lord  Beaconsfield  has  at  least  never  failed  to  pique 
curiosity.  We  propose  to  try  and  satisfy  it  by  follow- 
ing, in  two  or  three  articles,  his  political  life.  Before 
essaying  to  do  so,  it  may  be  well  to  endeavour  to  get 
some  general  idea  of  the  influences  of  race,  of  an- 
cestry, and  of  contemporary  circumstances  which  at 
least  contributed  to  make  the  man  what  he  was  and 
is.  Lord  Beaconsfield's  parliamentary  career  began 
with  the  first  session  of  the  first  parliament  of  the 
present  reign.  In  some  respects  no  single  life  more 
instructively  connects  and  illustrates  the  various  as- 
pects of  the  Victorian  epoch  of  our  history. 

Very  early  in  his  career,  Lord  Beaconsfield — or  as 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  II 

he  then  used  to  style  himself,  Disraeli  the  Younger — 
published  a  pamphlet  with  the  title,  "  What  is  He  ?  " 
The  He  in  question  was  of  course  Mr.  Disraeli,  who 
has  always  been  a  good  deal  occupied  with  himself. 
The  inquiry  to  which  in  this  instance  he  volunteered 
a  reply  is  said  to  have  been  made  in  conversation  by 
the  late  Earl  Grey.  The  Whig  chief  had  heard  with 
amazement,  and  probably  some  feeling  of  half  artic- 
ulate indignation,  of  a  young  man  unknown  in  the 
lobbies  and  saloons,  unvouched  for  either  by  Mr. 
Ellice  or  by  Lady  Holland,  who  had  ventured  to 
stand  against  one  of  Lord  Grey's  sons  as  a  candidate 
for  High  Wycombe,  that  "very  respectable  street" 
which  subsequently  had  the  honour  of  being  repre- 
sented by  Mr.  Bernal  Osborne,  who  paid  historic 
tribute  to  it  in  the  phrase  which  we  have  just  quoted. 
On  a  later  occasion,  when  a  candidate  for  another 
constituency,  Mr.  Disraeli  explained  to  a  plebeian 
inquirer,  as  curious  as  Lord  Grey,  that  High  Wy- 
combe was  a  borough  in  Buckinghamshire  belonging 
to  his  father,  who,  he  added  with  a  certain  territorial 
pride  which  has  marked  him  through  his  career, 
owned  property  in  three  counties.  Since  Dogberry 
modestly  vaunted  his  possession  of  two  gowns  and 


13  POLITICAL  ADVENTURES   OF 

everything  handsome  about  him,  a  more  ingenuously 
pleasing  declaration  has  not  been  made.  Unhappily 
the  pamphlet  in  which  the  younger  Disraeli  stood 
and  unfolded  himself  for  the  edification  of  Lord  Grey 
has  perished.  It  is  unknown  to  the  shelves  of  the 
British  Museum.  It  remains  dispersed  over  a  multi- 
tude of  scattered  trunks,  defying  the  industry  of  the 
most  indefatigable  collector  to  bring  them  together 
and  to  reconstruct  it.  The  loss  is  to  be  deplored. 
In  this  little  work  Lord  Beaconsfield  stood  forth, 
avowing  in  substance  :  "  I  am  my  own  interpreter, 
and  I  will  make  it  plain." 

The  pamphlet  is  probably,  like  its  author,  unique 
in  English,  or  in  any  other  literature.  There  have 
been  men  in  abundance  who  have  written  apologies 
and  confessions,  some  of  which  the  world  could  have 
very  well  spared.  They  have  given  an  account  of 
the  things  they  have  done  and  of  the  motives  by 
which  they  were  actuated.  Lord  Beaconsfield  took 
a  different  course.  He  began  his  career  by  writing  a 
preface  to  a  life  of  which  scarcely  the  first  pages  were 
composed,  and  of  which  nobody  had  at  that  time 
shown  any  disposition  to  turn  the  leaves.  In  one  of 
his  essays,  Dr.  James  Martineau  refers  to  a  German 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD.  13 

play  in  which  Adam  is  introduced  crossing  the  stage, 
going  to  be  created.  This  is  something  like  the  posi- 
tion in  which  Mr.  Disraeli  presents  himself  in  this 
early  explanation  of  himself  to  the  wondering  mind 
of  the  old  Whig  peer.  The  loss  of  Mr.  Disraeli's  early 
treatise  inoon  himself  is  irreparable,  and  there  is  no 
use  in  shedding  more  tears  over  it.  In  one  sense  the 
pamphlet  and  the  question  to  which  it  offers  a  reply 
may  be  considered  as  prefiguring  the  attitude  of  the- 
public  to  Lord  Beaconsfield  and  Lord  Beaconsfield's 
attitude  towards  himself.  For  fifty  years  "  the  great 
lubber,"  as  he  somewhere  styles  the  nation  which  has 
made  him  Prime  Minister,  has  been  rubbing  its  eyes 
and  scratching  its  head  and  asking,  with  a  perplexed 
amazement  like  Lord  Grey's,  "  What  is  He  ?  "  Lord 
Beaconsfield  in  his  turn  has  made  reply,  during  half 
a  century,  in  speeches  and  essays  and  novels,  which 
together  form  a  considerable  bulk  of  literature.  Still 
his  countrymen  ask,  "  What  is  he  ?  "  So  we  get  no 
further.  He  is  himself  alone.  To  explain  is  to  refer 
to  more  general  categories.  Lord  Beaconsfield  can 
scarcely  be  classified;  no  one  but  himself  can  be  his 
parallel. 

Nevertheless  attempts  have  been  made  from  time  to 


14  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

time  to  gather  together  the  scattered  voices  and  to  put 
some  sort  of  interpretation  upon  them.  They  are 
likely  to  be  continued.  An  enigma  however  trivial, 
a  mystery  however  worthless,  piques  curiosity ;  and 
Lord  Beaconsfield's  strange  character  and  fortunes, 
neither  trivial  nor  worthless,  will  always  possess  a  cer- 
tain degree  of  interest  for  the  student  of  human  nature 
in  its  more  eccentric  and  whimsical  developments. 
In  the  dull  succession  of  arch  mediocrities  who  for 
the  greater  part  make  up  the  list  of  English  prime 
ministers,  his  fantastic  figure  must  always  draw  atten- 
tion and  stimulate  speculation.  How  he  came  to  be 
what  he  was  and  where  he  is,  is  likely  to  be  a  theme 
of  mildly  renewed  surprise  and  conjectural  explana- 
tion for  many  generations.  A  Hebrew  proverb  which 
Lord  Beaconsfield  quotes  in  one  of  his  novels,  speak- 
ing of  what  is  to  happen  in  the  fulness  of  time,  an- 
nounces that  "We  shall  yet  see  an  ass  mount  a  lad- 
der." We  are  reluctant  to  quote  the  proverb  in  this 
connection;  but  the  ass,  it  must  be  remembered,  is 
in  the  East  a  very  fleet,  spirited,  and  beautiful  crea- 
ture, and  is  held  there  in  high  and  just  esteem.  Lord 
Beaconsfield,  if  we  recollect  rightly,  applies  the  pro- 
verb to  the  wonderful  elevation  of  his  own  wonderful 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD.  15 

Alroy,  who,  from  being  the  prince  of  the  captivity, 
became  the  King  of  Judah  and  the  deliverer  of  his 
people.  In  a  similar  sense,  and  disembarrassed  of 
the  injurious  associations  with  which  centuries  of  op- 
pression and  domestic  servitude  have  surrounded  a 
once  noble  and  still  useful  quadruped,  the  image  may 
be  applied  to  Lord  Beaconsfield.  The  Hebrew  prov- 
erb has  received  its  fulfilment :  we  have  seen  the  ass 
mount  the  ladder.  Not  only  so,  he  has  maintained 
himself  there  as  if  the  posture  and  situation  were  nat- 
ural. This  personal  elevation  may,  perhaps,  be  con- 
sidered as  part  of  a  more  general  phenomenon.  It 
applies  not  only  to  Lord  Beaconsfield,  but  to  the  his- 
toric race  of  which  he  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
illustratory  ornaments.  Some  time  ago  a  respectable 
member  of  Parliament  in  arguing  some  question,  we 
forget  what,  found  it  necessary  to  recall  to  the  recol- 
lection of  his  hearers  the  historic  fact  that  we  do  not 
now  live  under  the  Mosaic  dispensation.  Lord  Bea- 
consfield held  office  at  the  time,  and  gazed  at  the 
orator  from  the  Treasury  bench.  The  Opposition 
laughed.  Even  the  docile  ministerialists  tittered  and 
coughed  The  impression  seemed  to  prevail  that  we 
do  live  in  some  sense  under  a  Mosaic  dispensation. 


1 6  POLITICAL  ADVENTURES   OF 

In  administration,  in  finance,  and  in  journalism, 
Jewish  influences  notoriously  shape  and  guide  Eng- 
lish politics.  This  is  not  a  new  thing  in  European 
history,  though  in  England  it  is  now  more  pronounced 
and  obvious  than  it  has  ever  been  before.  The  phe- 
nomenon itself,  however,  is  two  thousand  years  old. 
In  the  latest  volume  of  his  Hisloire  des  Origines 
du  Christianisme,  M.  Renan,  speaking  of  Josephus, 
says  :  "  II  avait  cette  facilite  superficielle  qui  fait  que 
le  Juif,  transport^  dans  une  civilisation  qui  lui  est 
6trang6re,  se  met  avec  une  merveilleuse  prestesse  au 
courant  des  idees  au  milieu  desquelles  il  se  trouve 
jet6,  et  voit  par  quel  col6  il  peut  les  exploiter."  The 
same  phenomenon  is  observable  now.  The  politicians 
and  journalists  who  carry  on  the  largest  trade  in 
patriotic  phrases  and  national  prejudices,  are  Jews 
who,  like  Josephus,  transported  into  a  civilisation 
which  is  foreign  to  them  have  placed  themselves  with 
marvellous  dexterity  in  the  current  of  the  ideas  which 
float  about  them  in  order  to  find  a  means  of  turning 
them  to  account.  In  one  of  his  early  papers,  Thack- 
eray describes  an  incident  at  a  city  dinner  :  "  The 
Royal  health  having  been  imbibed,  the  professional 
gentlemen  ejaculated  a  part  of  the  national  anthem ; 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  I  7 

and  I  do  not  mean  any  disrespect  to  them  personally 
in  mentioning  that  this  eminently  religious  hymn  was 
performed  by  Messrs.  Shadrach  and  Meshech,  two 
well-known  melodists  of  the  Hebrew  persuasion." 
Later  in  the  evening,  "the  elderly  Hebrew  gentleman 
before  mentioned  began  striking  up  a  wild  patriotic 
ditty  about  the  '  Queen  of  the  Isles '  on  whose  sea- 
girt shores  the  bright  sun  smiles  and  the  ocean  roars, 
whose  cliffs  never  knew,  since  the  bright  sun  rose, 
but  a  people  true  who  scorned  all  foes."  Practically 
this  has  been  the  course  of  politics  during  the  last  two 
years.  The  parliamentary  Shadrachs  and  the  jour- 
nalistic Meshechs  have  been  singing  the  national 
anthem  and  patriotic  melodies  to  an  amused  and  ex- 
cited audience  who  have  shouted  and  banged  their 
glasses,  and  have  believed  in  the  spontaneity  and  dis- 
interestedness and  genuine  British  feeling  of  Shadrach 
and  Meshech  and  the  other  Hebrew  gentleman,  who 
pays  these  pipers. 

Everybody  who  has  read  Lord  Beaconsfield's  novels 
must  recollect  one  of  the  cleverest  things  in  any  of 
them, — the  conversation  in  Tancred  about  The  Reve- 
lations of  Qiaos,  a  work  which  occupied  the  world  of 
Lord  Beaconsfield's  characters  at  the  time  when  the 


1 8  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

world  of  flesh  and  blood  was  talking  about  The  Ves- 
tiges of  Creation.  "  You  know  all  is  development : 
the  principle  is  perpetually  going  on.  First,  there 
was  nothing,  then  there  was  something ;  then,  I  for- 
get the  next,  I  think  there  were  shells,  then  fishes ; 
then  we  came.  Let  me  see — did  we  come  next  ? 
Never  mind  that,  we  came  at  last :  and  the  next 
change,  there  will  be  something  very  superior  to  us  ; 
something  with  wings.  Ah,  that's  it :  we  were  fishes 
and  I  believe  we  shall  be  crows."  No  one,  how- 
ever proud  he  may  be  of  having  been  a  fish,  or  how- 
ever anxious  he  may  be  to  become  a  crow,  can  ob- 
ject to  banter  of  this  kind  which,  like  the  noises  in 
Prospero's  island,  "gives  delight  and  hurts  not"  even 
the  doctrine  which  it  plays  with.  Earlier,  however, 
in  his  course  of  philosophic  speculation,  Lord  Bea- 
consfield  had  professed  a  different  theory,  which  has 
more  affinity  than  his  later  view  with  what  is  funda- 
mental in  his  writings,  and  especially  with  his  doc- 
trine of  race.  In  Contarini  Fleming  he  sets  forth  the 
proposition  that  "the  various  tribes  (of  men)  that 
people  this  globe,  in  all  probability  spring  from  dif- 
ferent animals."  Civilisation,  he  complains,  has  de- 
serted the  regions  and  intellects  she  once  most 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD.  19 

favoured.  The  Persians,  the  Arabs,  the  Greeks  are 
now  unlettered  slaves  in  barbarous  lands.  "  The 
arts  are  yielded  to  the  flat-nosed  Franks."  Lord 
Beaconsfield  has  never  been  able  to  get  over  his  dis- 
like, or  even  to  refrain  from  the  expression  of  his 
deep-seated  repugnance  for  the  unfortunate  Frankish 
nose.  "  And  they  toil  and  study  and  invent  theories 
to  account  for  their  own  incompetence.  Now  it  is 
the  climate,  now  the  religion,  now  the  government ; 
everything  but  the  mortifying  suspicion  that  their  or- 
ganization may  be  different ;  that  they  may  be  as 
distinct  a  race  from  their  models  as  they  undoubtedly 
are  from  the  Kalmuck  and  the  negro."  We  may  ad- 
mit to  Lord  Beaconsfield  that  distinctions  of  race, 
whether  they  be  aboriginal  or  derivative,  of  animal 
or  of  circumstantial  origin,  have  at  last  been  formed, 
and  ought  to  be  taken  into  account.  There  is  no  one 
from  a  consideration  of  whose  life  they  can  be  less 
safely  omitted  than  from  his  own.  There  is  little 
nsed  of  reserve  on  the  subject,  for  Lord  Beaconsfield 
has  practised  none  himself,  and  his  relations  to  his 
own  people  are  the  most  honourable  and  attractive 
element  in  his  story. 

Lord  Beaconsfield  is  the  most  remarkable  illustra 


2O  POLITICAL  ADVENTURES   OF 

tion  of  his  own  doctrine  of  the  ascendancy  of  Hebrew 
genius  in  modern  Europe.  The  latest  philosophy 
propounds  that  what  is  peculiar  to  himself  in  each 
individual  is  really  a  smaller  part  of  him  than  the 
qualities  which  he  derives  from  his  personal  ancestry 
and  the  race  to  which  he  and  they  belong.  Lord 
Beaconsfield  unites,  in  a  manner  which  the  history  of 
his  family  explains,  the  qualities  of  the  Hebrew  and 
of  the  "  super-subtle  Venetian."  In  the  sketch  of  his 
father's  life  which  is  prefixed  to  one  of  the  editions  of 
the  Curiosities  of  Literature,  he  narrates  the  fortunes 
of  his  house.  In  the  fifteenth  century,  some  of  his 
ancestors,  driven  from  Spain  by  Torquemada  and 
the  Inquisition,  took  refuge  in  Venice.  During  two 
centuries  they  remained  there.  Possibly  sufficiently 
careful  research  might  detect  some  trace  of  them 
in  the  relics  of  the  old  Hebrew  burial-ground  on 
the  Lido.  '  Like  Timon  "  entombed  upon  the  very 
hem  of  the  sea,"  these  poor  Jews  have  "  made 
their  everlasting  mansion  upon  the  beached  verge 
01  the  salt  flood."  Slabs  of  stone,  half  buried 
into  the  earth  or  covered  with  grass  and  creeping 
vegetation,  recall  in  their  often  still  legible  Hebrew 
characters  the  names  and  families  of  the  Jews  ban 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  21 

ished  in  their  death  from  the  society  in  which  they 
were  barely  tolerated  during  their  lives.  The  favour- 
able position  of  Mr.  Pelham  gave  a  new  opening  to 
Jewish  enterprise  in  England  towards  the  middle  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  In  1 749  Benjamin  Disraeli, 
the  grandfather  of  the  present  Prime  Minister,  who 
may,  perhaps,  have  had  Shylock  or  Tubal  among  his 
ancestors,  settled  in  England.  At  this  time,  Lord 
Beaconsfield  records,  "  There  might  be  found,  among 
other  Jewish  families  flourishing  in  this  country,  the 
Villa  Reals,  who  brought  wealth  to  these  shores 
almost  as  great  as  their  name,  though  that  is  the 
second  in  Portugal,  and  who  have  twice  allied  them- 
selves with  the  English  aristocracy :  the  Medinas, 
the  Laras,  who  were  our  kinsmen,  and  the  Mendez 
de  Costas,  who,  I  believe,  still  exist."  Mr.  Pelham's 
good  intentions  bore  fruit,  but  not  very  lasting  fruit. 
The  Jews'  Naturalisation  Bill,  which  he  succeeded  in 
passing  in  1753,  was  repealed  the  next  year  after  his 
death  by  the  Duke  of  Newcastle,  under  the  influence 
of  a  popular  and  ecclesiastical  clamour  which  must 
have  taught  the  Venetian  emigrant  that  he  had  little 
to  expect  from  liberal  opinion  in  England.  Sir  John 
Barnard  put  the  conclusive  argument  that  if  the  Jews 


22  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

were  allowed  to  hold  land  in  this  country,  all  security 
would  be  gone  for  the  maintenance  of  Christianity  as 
the  fashionable  religion.  But  the  argument  of  the 
streets  was  yet  more  decisive.  Political  recognition 
would  probably  have  cost  the  Jews  such  social  tolera- 
tion as  they  enjoyed  by  the  connivance  of  interest 
rather  than  that  of  generosity  or  friendship.  If  the 
policy  of  Mr.  Pelham  had  been  persisted  in  and  ex- 
tended, the  character  and  career  of  the  present  Prime 
Minister  might  have  been  very  different  from  that 
which  we  propose  to  examine.  The  Jewish  families, 
his  among  the  rest,  were  forced  to  remain  foreigners 
and  Israelites.  They  were  not  allowed  to  become 
Englishmen.  The  development  of  a  new  species,  by 
the  process  of  evolution  and  transformation,  is,  accord- 
ing to  the  most  trustworthy  authorities  in  natural  his- 
tory, a  very  slow  one,  except  in  cases  of  very  rare 
flexibility.  There  has  not  yet  been  time  for  the  con- 
version of  the  Jew  into  the  true  Briton.  This  would 
require  Ovid's  metamorphosis,  and  not  Darwin's. 
Certainly  a  century  and  a  quarter  of  residence  in  Eng- 
land on  the  part  of  his  ancestors  and  himself  has  left 
little  trace  on  the  mind  and  character  of  Lord  Lea- 
consfield.  He  is  in  almost  every  essential  point  far 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD.  23 

more  of  a  Venetian  and  a  Jew  than  of  an  Englishman. 
The  two  cities  to  which  his  imagination  stretches 
backwards  most  constantly  and  affectionately  are 
Jerusalem  and  Venice.  They  enter  into  his  political 
visions,  in  which  Lord  Beaconsfield  takes  things  a 
great  deal  more  seriously  than  he  does  his  dealings 
with  practical  English  politics,  in  which  there  is 
always  a  great  deal  of  make-believe,  too  obvious  to 
be  called  deceptive.  Thackeray  has  remarked  upon 
the  odd  fate  which  sent  Mr.  G.  P.  R.  James  as  con- 
sul to  the  only  city  in  Europe  in  which  it  would  be 
impossible  for  him  to  encounter  the  two  horsemen, 
at  least  with  their  horses,  who  figure  on  the  first  page 
of  nearly  all  his  romances.  It  was  an  odder  destiny 
which  derived  the  champion  of  the  British  territorial 
interest  and  landed  aristocracy  from  a  race  debarred 
from  owning  property  in  land,  and  from  a  city  in 
which  from  the  nature  of  the  case  a  territorial  aristo- 
cracy could  not  exist.  Perhaps  the  principle  of  re- 
action and  antagonism  made  the  descendant  of  a 
family  of  Venetian  Jews,  the  champion  and  represen- 
tative of  the  large-acred  lords  and  squires  of  England. 
More  probably  it  was  his  possession  in  the  nine- 
teenth century  of  that  faculty  which  Renan  has 


24  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

noted  in  the  Jew  of  the  first  century.  It  is  another 
instance  of  the  wonderful  dexterity  of  the  Hebrew  in 
throwing  himself  into  the  current  of  ideas  foreign  to 
him,  and  of  humouring  the  prejudices  of  the  people 
among  whom  he  may  be  thrown  for  his  own  advan- 
tage. 

Lord  Beaconsfield  has  described  the  home  of  his 
grandfather  at  Enfield  in  a  few  delicate  yet  distinct 
touches.  The  Venetian  settler  was  a  zealous  man 
of  business  and  an  accomplished  man  of  the  world. 
He  occupied  himself  impartially  in  trade  and  pleasure, 
dividing  his  time  between  activity  in  making  a  for- 
tune and  the  sweet  indolence  of  its  enjoyment.  He 
laid  out  an  Italian  garden  at  Enfield,  he  played  whist 
with  Sir  Horace  Mann,  he  ate  macaroni  which  was 
dressed  by  the  Venetian  consul — who,  we  hope,  was 
worthy  of  the  confidence  thus  reposed  in  him,  and 
dressed  his  macaroni  as  skilfully  as  the  Prime  Minis- 
ter in  Conlarini  Fleming  was  reported  to  have  made 
cream  cheeses.  Lord  Beaconsfield,  who  was  a  lad 
of  twelve  when  his  grandfather  died,  draws  his  char- 
acter with  evident  sympathy  for  it,  both  in  its  fine 
gentleman  or  macaroni  aspect,  and  on  its  more 
strenuous  business  side.  Perhaps  there  is  some  con- 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  25 

sciousness  of  inherited  qualities  and  aptitudes  in  his 
delineation  of  the  Venetian  emigrant  as  a  man  of 
"ardent  character,  sanguine,  courageous,  speculative 
and  fortunate ;  with  a  temper  which  no  disappoint- 
ment could  disturb  and  a  brain  amid  reverses  full  of 
resource."  In  the  sketch  of  his  father  there  is  more 
tenderness,  and  even  a  touch  of  something  like  af- 
fectionate compassion.  Isaac  Disraeli  lived  only  in 
his  library  and  his  literary  projects,  careless  of  the 
politics  of  the  day,  and  indeed  utterly  unintelligent  of 
them.  In  these  two  men  it  is  not  perhaps  fanciful  to 
trace  in  addition  to  the  workings  of  natural  character 
and  tastes,  the  influences  of  isolation  from  the  society 
in  which  they  lived,  owing  to  the  prejudices  of  race, 
religion,  and  the  undefined  social  prescription  thence 
derived,  which  hemmed  them  in  in  a  sort  of  moral 
Ghetto  or  Juden  Strasse.  The  grandfather  sought  a 
refuge  in  the  ordinary  commercial  enterprises  of 
the  Jew  and  in  the  amusements  of  the  exile.  The 
father  fled  from  his  own  world  and  his  own  time  into 
the  past  and  to  his  books.  A  sense  of  isolation  and 
detachment  was  apparently  impressed  upon  the 
household. 

But   to  complete  the  understanding  of  the  silent 


26  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

influence  of  persons  and  feelings  which  is  likely  to 
have  contributed  insensibly  to  shape  the  character 
and  aims  of  the  lad  who  was  afterwards  to  be  Prime 
Minister  of  England,  another  figure  needs  to  be 
sketched  in  the  family  group.  Lord  Beaconsfield  has 
not  omitted  it  from  his  picture  of  a  Jewish  interior, 
though  it  must  have  required  some  courage  to  "draw 
its  outlines,  as  he  has  done,  with  stern  strokes  and  an 
unfaltering  hand.  In  the  two  men,  father  and  son, 
we  see  the  flexible  and  accommodating  nature  of  the 
Jew  who  bows  to  circumstances,  and  with  a  patient 
shrug  lets  the  world  pass  in  which  he  is  disinherited 
and  proscribed.  But  the  Jewish  character  has  an- 
other side  than  that  of  accommodation  and  acquies- 
cence. It  has  a  fierceness  of  hate  and  resentment 
which,  when  it  cannot  wreak  its  passions  upon  its 
enemies  and  persecutors,  preys  upon  and  rends  itself. 
Lord  Beaconsfield  describes  his  grandmother  as  hat- 
ing her  race,  and  as  detesting  the  very  name  which 
her  marriage  had  given  her,  and  which  was  a  per- 
petual witness  of  her  Jewish  connexions.  He  adds 
that  she  was  "  so  mortified  by  her  social  position  that 
she  lived  until  eighty  without  indulging  a  tender 
expression."  It  is  perhaps  from  this  strange  figure, 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  27 

ji  which  it  is  easy  to  recognise  in  an  introverted  form 
the  stern  lineaments  that  have  marked  the  zealots  and 
fanatics  of  the  race,  that  the  aathor  of  Daniel  Deronda 
has  drawn  the  Jew-hating  Jewess  who  is  the  mother  of 
her  hero.  Lord  Beacon  sfield  had  never  probably  at 
any  period  of  his  career  much  in  common  with  the 
amiable  walking  gentleman  whom  the  genius  of  George 
Eliot  has  vainly  endeavoured  to  convert  into  a  man 
of  thought  and  action.  But  Daniel  Deronda  could 
not  more  thoroughly  and  openly  avow  the  ties  of 
blood,  which  in  spite  of  an  ostensibly  Christian  pro- 
fession and  training  bound  him  to  his  people,  than 
Lord  Beaconsfield  has  always  done.  So  far  as  has 
depended  upon  himself,  he  has  been  faithful  to  the 
purpose  of  his  ancestors,  who  on  their  escape  from 
Spain  to  Venice  "  assumed  the  name  of  Disraeli,  a 
name  never  borne  before  or  since  by  any  other  family 
in  order  that  their  race  might  be  forever  recognised." 
Lord  Beaconsfield  has  never  been  untrue  in  spirit  to 
this  virtual  vow  of  a  persecuted  house,  "  grateful  to 
the  God  of  Jacob,  who  had  sustained  them  through  un- 
precedented trials,  and  guarded  them  through  un- 
heard-of perils."  Perhaps  on  the  "whole,  though  the 
error  is  on  the  side  of  courage  and  manliness,  he  has 


28  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

been  almost  too  ostentatiously  faithful  to  it.  Judaism 
and  the  Jews  have  been  thrust  by  him  with  an  almost 
unnecessary  pertinacity  into  English  politics  and 
literature.  The  consciousness  of  his  race  and  of 
their  faith  seems  never  to  escape  him.  Lord  Bea- 
consfield  has  made  that  a  matter  of  honourable  pride, 
and  even  occasionally  of  something  like  bravado, 
which  was  to  his  ancestress  one  of  life-long  shame  and 
torment.  He  has  never  been  able  to  leave  the 
matter  alone,  and  to  consider  the  question  of  Jew 
or  Gentile  as  a  thing  socially  and  politically  indif- 
ferent. Perhaps  this  would  have  been  impossible  in 
the  midst  of  the  prejudices  of  race  and  religion  by 
which  he  has  been  surrounded,  and  in  face  of  the 
coarse  insults  which  those  prejudices  have  occasion- 
ally prompted.  Lord  Beaconsfield's  conduct  on  this 
point  during  the  whole  of  his  political  and  literary 
career  is  entitled  to  genuine  and  cordial  respect. 
Even  the  extravagances  into  which  he  has  been  be- 
trayed are  extravagances  of  courageous  championship 
and  of  manly  self-assertion.  They  deserve  indulgent 
and  tender  treatment.  No  one  can  judge  of  them 
fairly  who  does  not  keep  in  mind  the  mortifying  and 
sometimes  painful  and  cruel  domestic  experiences 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  29 

out  of  which  they  have  sprung.  Of  the  builders  of 
the  Temple  in  Jerusalem  it  is  recorded  that  "  every 
one  with  one  of  his  hands  wrought  in  the  work,  and 
with  the  other  hand  held  a  weapon.  For  the  builders 
every  one  had  his  sword  girded  by  his  side  and  so 
builded."  In  rebuilding  the  fortunes  of  their  race  in 
Europe  the  Jews  have  laboured  under  precisely 
similar  conditions.  Toiling  under  the  eyes  of  watch- 
ful and  relentless  enmity,  with  one  of  their  hands  they 
have  wrought  in  the  work,  and  with  the  other  hand 
held  a  weapon.  In  no  one  has  this  militant  attitude, 
half  defensive,  half  offensive,  but  only  aggressive  for 
the  sake  of  more  effectual  self-defence,  been  more 
conspicuous  and  successful  than  in  Lord  Beaconsfield. 
But  the  success  is  not  personal  merely  or  his  alone. 
He  is  but  the  signal  type,  the  prerogative  instance 
of  the  completeness  of  the  conquest  by  which  the 
Jewish  captivity,  like  captive  Greece,  has  taken 
captive  its  fierce  victor.  Lord  Beaconsfield  has  been 
in  his  way,  not  less  than  his  Alroy,  a  Prince  of  the 
Captivity,  and  to  have  become  Prime  Minister  of 
England,  even  at  the  cost  of  quitting  the  faith  of  his 
fathers,  is  not  a  less  achievement  than,  like  his  hero, 
to  have  become  caliph. 


30  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

In  literature,  Lord  Beaconsfield  has  been  essentially 
a  Jewish  apologist;  Josephus  and  the  false  Aristo- 
bulus  simply  anticipated  his  method,  or  rather  he 
applied  theirs  with  a  difference.  They  set  themselves 
to  prove  to  an  indifferent  and  laughing  Gentile  world 
that  the  philosophy  and  morals  of  the  Greek  and 
Roman  poets  and  sages  were  derived  from  the  He- 
brew Scriptures  ;  and  perpetrated  not  a  few  forgeries 
to  make  good  their  point.  Lord  Beaconsfield  has 
with  more  boldness  claimed  as  of  Jewish  race  nearly 
all  the  most  distinguished  men  of  science  and  art,  of 
thought  and  action,  whom  modern  Europe  has  pro- 
duced, and  in  doing  so  has  been  genealogically  a 
rather  credulous  Apella.  He  has  pleaded  the  cause 
of  his  race  and  original  faith  with  one  great  advantage. 
He  has  done  so  as  an  ostensible  convert  to  Christi- 
anity. But  he  is  essentially,  if  we  may  use  a  distinc- 
tion as  old  as  the  religion  itself,  a  Hebrew  and  not  a 
Gentile  Christian.  His  view  of  the  religion  is  perhaps 
rather  peculiar  in  our  day,  whatever  it  may  have  been 
two  thousand  years  ago.  He  apparently  regards  it 
as  a  kind  of  second  part  or  continuation  of  Judaism, 
bearing  the  same  sort  of  relation  to  it  of  affiliation  and 
of  inferiority  as  that  which  the  second  part  of  Faust 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD.  3! 

sustains  to  the  first ;  or  which  Paradise  Regained 
has  to  Paradise  Lost.  The  work  is  genuine  ;  it  is, 
perhaps,  a  necessary  supplement  to  its  predecessor 
and  recompletion  of  it,  but  showing  signs  of  the  old 
age  and  the  declining  powers  of  the  race  from  whose 
religious  genius  it  has  sprung.  Of  course,  Lord 
Beaconsfield  does  not  say  as  much  as  this.  He  does 
not  even  insinuate  it.  Nevertheless,  an  impression 
such  as  that  we  have  conveyed  is  distinctly  produced. 
If  we  may  trust  statements  commonly  made,  Lord 
Beaconsfield  owes  in  the  main  to  accident  his  oppor- 
tunity of  pleading,  in  the  character  of  a  professor  of 
the  second  part  of  the  Jewish  religion,  on  behalf  of 
the  social  and  personal  claims  and  the  civil  rights  of 
those  of  his  race  who  accept  only  the  first.  Through 
a  personal  quarrel  Isaac  Disraeli  broke  off  relations 
with  the  synagogue  without  entering  into  any  rela- 
tions with  the  Church.  It  is  said  that  the  Church  of 
England  is  indebted  to  the  good  nature  of  that  hea- 
then money-changer  and  verse-maker,  Samuel  Rogers, 
for  the  presence  of  Lord  Beaconsfield  among  its  faith- 
ful sons.  Rogers  did  not  kidnap  the  young  Benjamin 
Disraeli  as  the  young  Mortara  was  kidnapped.  He 
was  not  consumed  by  any  zeal  for  souls.  Thinking 


32  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

it  hard  that  an  empty  form  should  stand  in  the  way 
of  a  clever  boy's  prospects,  Rogers  it  is  said,  we  do 
not  know  with  what  truth,  took  him  off  to  St.  An- 
drew's Church,  Holborn.  There  it  is  certain  that  on 
3ist  of  July,  1817,  Benjamin  Disraeli,  "said  to  be 
about  twelve  years  of  age,"  as  the  baptismal  register 
records,  was  made  perhaps  as  much  of  a  Christian  as 
he  ever  became.  Whatever  the  instrumentality  em- 
ployed, Benjamin  Disraeli  became  a  member  of  the 
Church  of  England  in  the  year  1817,  and  as  such 
entered  upon  all  the  privileges,  civil  and  political, 
which  were  still  denied  not  only  to  Jews  and  unbe- 
lievers but  to  Papists  and  dissenters. 

The  discipline  of  a  private  academy,  and,  it  is  said, 
of  a  solicitor's  office,  were  substituted  in  his  case  for 
that  of  the  public  school  and  the  university.  What- 
ever the  loss  to  him  may  have  been  morally  and 
socially,  Lord  Beaconsfield  has  never  been  deficient 
in  those  intellectual  attainments  which  it  is  common 
to  connect  with  university  training — too  exclusively, 
as  the  names  of  Mill  and  Grote  have  sufficiently 
shown  even  to  a  British  House  of  Commons.  It  is 
perhaps  to  be  regretted  that  what  seems  a  premature 
mannishness  should  have  thrust  young  Disraeli  into 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  33 

the  world  of  action  and  of  authorship,  when  he  would 
have  -been  more  naturally  and  profitably  under  the 
discipline  of  pupilage  and  spurred  by  the  emulation 
and  friendships  of  college  life.  A  certain  self-enclos- 
ure and  isolation  to  which  he  has  been  prone  through 
life  might  have  been  in  some  degree  combated,  if 
Lord  Beaconsfield  had  ever  been  a  boy  among  boys 
or  a  young  man  among  young  men.  Silence  and  the 
concentrated  self-absorption,  which  save  at  rare 
moments  have  marked  him  in  Parliament  and  in 
general  society,  might  have  given  way  if  more  genial 
influences  in  early  manhood  had  followed  upon  the~ 
unhappy  experience  to  which  his  race  and  religion 
subjected  his  childhood.  It  would  probably  be  a 
mistake  to  read  the  more  remarkable  of  his  earlier 
novels,  Vivian  Grey  and  Contarini  Fleming,  as  direct- 
ly and  designedly  autobiographic.  If  the  author  had 
been  consciously  drawing  his  own  portrait  in  either, 
the  lineaments  would  almost  certainly  have  been  more 
pi  :asing.  The  tone  of  mockery  and  burlesque  with 
which  the  young  heroes  comment  on  their  own  pro- 
ceedings would  have  been  spared.  It  is  quite  obvi- 
ous that  the  author  of  Vivian  Grey  and  Contarini 
Fleming  regards  those  young  gentlemen  as  very  often 


34  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

a  pair  of  intolerably  conceited  and  unamiable  jacka- 
napes, who  would  have  been  the  better  for  a  chasten- 
ing. Unconsciously,  however,  the  ideas  over  which 
the  author's  mind  was  brooding,  ideas  springing  out 
of  his  own  position  in  society  and  his  relations  to  life, 
constantly  appear.  A  very  young  writer  who  has  had 
.very  little  experience  of  mankind  and  the  world,  de- 
scribes himself  without  knowing  it  because  he  has 
nothing  else  to  describe.  Vivian  Grey's  lament:  "If 
I  were  the  son  of  a  millionaire  or  a  noble,  I  might 
have  all.  Curse  on  my  lot !  that  the  want  of  a  few 
rascal  counters,  the  possession  of  a  little  rascal  blood, 
should  mar  my  fortune,"  is  very  likely,  with  the 
patriotic  change  of  a  single  word,  to  have  been  on 
the  lips  of  the  younger  Disraeli.  In  the  preface  to 
Contarini  Fleming,  again,  the  author  sets  forth  one 
of  the  aims  which  he  had  in  writing.  He  "endeav- 
oured," he  says,  "to  conceive  a  character  whose 
position  in  life  should  be  at  variance  and,  as  it 
were,  in  constant  conflict  with  his  temperament. 
.  .  .  The  combination  that  connected  in  one 
being  Scandinavia  and  the  South,  and  made  the 
image  of  a  distant  and  most  romantic  city  con- 
tinually act  upon  a  nervous  temperament  sur« 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD.  35 

rounded  by  the  snows  and  forests  of  the  north, 
though  novel,  it  is  believed,  in  literature,  was  by  no 
means  an  impossible  or  even  an  improbable  one."  If 
we  substitute  the  mist  and  rain  of  England  for  the 
snows  and  forests  of  Scandinavia,  and  conceive  the 
image  of  Jerusalem  as  well  as  that  of  Venice  con- 
stantly present  to  the  mind  of  the  exile,  we  have  a 
combination  not  only  possible  in  literature  but  actual 
in  the  author's  own  experience.  Contarini  Fleming 
grew  out  of  a  pilgrimage  to  the  East  and  to  Jerusa- 
lem, which  took  in  Spain  and  Venice  and  all  the  an- 
cestral lands  through  which  the  author's  race  and 
house  had  passed  during  the  long  wanderings  of  their 
exile.  The  feeling  which  animates  the  passage  we 
have  quoted  from  the  preface  of  Contarini  Fleming, 
finds  constant  expression  all  through  the  work.  There 
is  very  likely  no  conscious  personal  identification  of 
the  author  and  the  hero ;  but  the  pervading  sentiment 
is  for  that  all  the  deeper.  "  Some  exemption,"  Con- 
tarini hopes,  "  from  the  sectarian  prejudices  which 
embitter  life  may  be  surely  expected  from  one  who, 
by  a  curious  combination  of  circumstances,  finds  him- 
self  without  country,  without  kindred,  and  without 
friends.  Wherever  I  moved  I  looked  around  me  and 


36  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

beheld  a  race  different  from  myself.  There  was  no 
sympathy  between  my  frame  and  the  rigid  climate 
whither  I  had  been  brought  to  live."  "Their  blue 
eyes,  their  flaxen  hair  and  their  white  visages  claimed 
no  kith  and  kindred  with  my  Venetian  countenance." 
Again  Contarini  declaims  against  "  the  vast  quantity 
of  dull,  lowering,  entangling  ties  that  formed  the  great 
domestic  mesh,  and  bound  me  to  a  country  which  I 
detested,  covered  me  with  a  climate  which  killed  me, 
surrounded  me  with  manners  with  which  I  could  not 
sympathize."  In  Vivian  Grey  and  Contarini  Flem- 
ing the  two  barriers  which  stood  in  the  way  of  politi- 
cal ambition  are  presented  separately.  In  a  pluto- 
cratic aristocracy  a  poor  plebeian  laments  his  posses- 
sion of  rascal  blood,  or  blood  more  damaging  than 
that  of  rascaldom,  and  his  lack  of  rascal  counters. 
In  Scandinavia  the  hero  meets  the  obstacle  of  foreign 
race  and  uncongenial  temperament.  The  foreign  ad- 
venturers •  »vho  have  been  able  to  overcome  difficul- 
ties such  as  these  are  the  object  of  Contarini  Flem- 
ing's most  constant  and  earnest  admiration.  Alberoni 
and  Ripperda  are  statesmen  for  whom  something  like 
enthusiasm  is  expressed.  Lord  Beaconsfield  has 
been  more  lucky  or  more  dexterous  than  either  of 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD.  37 

these  political  fortune-hunters,  between  the  latter  of 
whom  and  himself  there  is  a  certain  resemblance,  es- 
pecially in  the  theological  speculations  with  which 
they  have  amused  their  leisure. 

A  character  and  a  mind  formed  in  the  domestic 
.and  social  circumstances  out  of  which  the  stories  of 
Vivian  Grey  and  Contarini  Fleming  naturally  came, 
and  which  they  expressed  with  a  faithfulness  all  the 
greater  for  being  undesigned,  needed  above  all  others 
the  discipline  of  an  English  home,  and  would  have 
been  the  better  for  the  equal  companionship  of  the 
public  school  and  the  university.  By  no  one  of  these 
roots  was  Lord  Beaconsfield  fixed  in  British  soil.  He 
may  be  compared  rather  to  one  of  those  air-plants 
which  draw  their  nourishment  and  take  their  color 
from  the  atmosphere  which  surrounds  them,  and  in 
which  they  float,  but  which  lay  no  hold  of  the  solid 
earth.  Vivian  Grey  and  Contarini  Fleming  were 
written  at  some  interval  of  time,  the  former  appear- 
ing in  1826,  the  latter  in  1831.  There  is,  however,  a 
certain  natural  connection  between  the  two  in  the 
unwitting  disclosure  of  their  author's  purpose  and 
character  which  they  contain.  They  reveal  to  us  the 
aims  and  feelings  with  which  their  author  entered 


38  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

upon  the  political  career  which  we  propose  to  review, 
and  of  which  they  are  the  preface.  It  is  impossible 
to  understand  Lord  Beaconsfield  without  them.  It 
may  not  be  possible  quite  to  understand  him  with 
them.  But  neither  the  books  nor  the  man  can  be 
comprehended  or  judged  -with  due  indulgence  apart 
from  each  other.  To  the  same  literary  period  belong 
The  Young  Duke,  Alroy,  and  The  Revolutionary 
Epic.  All  these  works  seem  to  have  been  produced 
not  because  the  writer  was  full  of  some  theme  or  con- 
ception which  claimed  expression,  but  because  he 
was  a  candidate  for  personal  distinction,  and  was 
resolved  to  obtain  it  by  one  means  or  another.  The 
Revolutionary  Epic  is  suggested  by  the  reflection 
that  Homer  having  produced  the  heroic  epic,  and 
Virgil  the  political  epic,  Dante  the  national  epic,  and 
Milton  the  religious  epic,  for  Disraeli  the  Younger 
there  remained  the  revolutionary  epic.  In  the  event 
of  the  public  failing  to  recognise,  and  to  be  quick 
about  it,  the  poetic  heir  of  Homer,  Virgil,  Dante,  and 
Milton,  the  inspired  poet  pledged  himself  "  without  a 
pang  to  hurl  his  Lyre  to  Limbo,"  both  of  which 
words  begin  most  fortunately  and  expressively  with 
L.  He  had  no  desire  to  sing  to  a  world  which  was 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  39 

as  the  deaf  adder  to  the  charmer.  Repeating  a  re- 
mark which  he  had  formerly  put  into  the  mouths  of 
Vivian  Grey  and  Contarini  Fleming,  "  I  am  not,"  he 
says,  "one  of  those  who  find  consolation  for  the 
neglect  of  my  contemporaries  in  the  imaginary  plaud- 
its of  a  more  sympathetic  posterity."  With  Lord 
Beaconsfield  it  is  all  a  question  of  applause.  The 
title-page  of  the  Revolutionary  Epic  sets  forth  in 
monumental  style  that  it  is  "  the  work  of  Disraeli  the 
Younger,  author  of  the  Psychological  Romance,"  a 
species  of  composition  of  which  Disraeli  the  Younger 
seems  to  have  supposed  that  he  was  the  inventor  in 
Contarini  Fleming.  In  that  work  he  had  set  forth  a 
doctrine  of  poetical  expression  which  seems  after- 
wards to  have  commended  itself  to  Mr.  Carlyle. 
LOL  .!  Beaconsfield  holds,  or  then  held,  that  the  metri- 
cal form  of  poetry  is  due  to  the  fact  that  it  was  at 
first  composed  to  be  sung  to  the  lyre,  and  that  the 
artifices  of  diction  and  the  barbaric  clash  of  rhyme 
are  ill  adapted  to  an  age  in  which  reading  has  taken 
the  place  of  recitation. 

The  Wonderful  Tale  of  Alroy,  which,  however, 
does  not  want  its  artifices  of  diction,  and  its  occa- 
sional clash  of  rhj  me,  was  composed  in  its  more  im- 


40  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

passioned  portions  on  this  principle.  Disraeli  the 
Younger  was  essentially  an  inventor  and  projector  in 
literature.  The  craving  for  fame  prompted  one  ex- 
travagant design  after  another.  Expressed  in  the 
plainest  terms,  and  urged  with  a  reiteration  which  even 
the  author's  liveliness  does  not  always  rescue  from 
tediousness  in  his  early  writings,  Vivian  Grey  and 
Contarini  Fleming  have  no  other  aim  in  life  than  to 
be  notorious  and  powerful,  chiefly  by  duping  or  terri- 
fying others.  Contarini  had  a  deep  conviction  that 
life  would  be  intolerable  unless  he  were  the  greatest 
of  men.  The  desire  of  distinction  and  of  astound- 
ing action  raged  in  his  infantile  soul.  Nor  does  he 
care  to  win  by  fair  means.  His  description  of  a 
schoolboy  fight  and  of  his  demeanour  in  it  is  pro- 
phetic of  the  spirit  in  which  the  writer's  political 
gladiatorship  has  been  conducted.  It  is  the  author 
of  the  Letters  of  Runnymede  and  the  assailant  of  Sir 
Robert  Peel  who  writes  of  this  schoolboy  struggle  : 
"  I  would  not  have  waited  for  their  silly  rules  of 
mock-combat,  but  have  destroyed  him  in  his  prostra- 
tion." A  similar  indifference  to  the  rules  of  the  ring 
and  to  fair' hitting  has  frequently  been  observable  in 
Lord  Beaconsfield's  political  encounters.  Fame  is 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  4! 

essential  to  Contarini,  though  not  posthumous  fame. 
Whether  it  is  to  be  won  as  a  brigand  or  as  a  warrior, 
as  a  prime  minister  or  as  a  revolutionary  leader,  as  a 
diplomatist  or  as  a  conspirator,  is  a  matter  of  only 
secondary  moment.  That  may  be  as  time  and  chance 
shall  determine.  The  great  thing  is  to  wield  author- 
ity conspicuously  and  magnificently,  to  be  feared  and 
to  be  envied.  That  this  power  is  to  be  used  for  the 
good  of  others  never  for  one  moment  occurs  to  the 
heroes  of  Lord  Beaconsfield's  early  novels.  It  may 
be  said  that  he  is  simply  describing  the  wild  notions 
and  dreams  with  which  the  brains  of  boys  swarm, 
while  they  are  still  in  the  merely  predatory  and  ani- 
mal stage  which  precedes  the  civilised  and  human 
one,  in  the  development  of  individual  character  as 
well  as  of  nature  and  society.  We  are  quite  ready 
to  make  such  allowance  as  this  consideration  re- 
quires. But  Lord  Beaconsfield's  heroes  never  pass 
into  a  further  stage.  There  is  no  sign  that  he  recog- 
nises one.  It  is  quite  easy  to  see  the  explanation  of 
this  shortcoming.  The  bonds  of  country  and  of 
class  have  from  the  very  nature  of  the  case  scarcely 
existed  for  Lord  Beaconsfield.  The  non-personal 
elements  wh:ch  bind  most  men  by  a  thousand  ties  t<? 


42  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

the  community  of  which  they  are  members,  and  to 
the  lesser  communities,  local  or  of  organized  senti- 
ment and  opinion,  into  which  every  nation  is  divided, 
have  been  for  him  as  if  they  were  not.  The  circum- 
stances of  his  birth,  the  legislation  and  social  temper 
of  the  country  to  which  his  ancestry  transferred  them- 
selves a  century  and  a  quarter  since,  the  inherited 
qualities  of  a  race  whose  habits  of  mind  and  charac- 
ter have  been  formed  by  nearly  two  thousand  years 
of  persecution  and  social  slight,  have  hindered  Lord 
Beaconsfield  from  cultivating  that  subordination  of 
mere  personal  greed,  whether  of  fame,  or  wealth,  or 
power,  to  the  well-being  of  a  sect,  a  party,  a  class,  a 
nation,  without  which  a  genuine  community  is  impos- 
sible. In  this  moral  banishment  the  social  and  even 
human  element  in  man  is  suppressed,  or  grows  up 
but  feebly  from  its  root  in  what  is  individual,  self- 
seeking  and  animal.  The  one  apparent  exception  in 
Lord  Beaconsfield's  case  is,  when  properly  viewed, 
simply  an  illustration .  of  the  general  rule.  He  has 
been  true  to  the  Jewish  people  who  are  really  his 
country  air.d  church.  He  has  quitted  them  in  sem- 
blance, but  in  so  doing  he  has  helped  them,  to  plead 
for  them  the  more  effectually.  For  the  rest  a  certain 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  43 

fidelity,  as  of  a  Swiss  mercenary  to  the  chief  or  party 
in  whose  service  he  has  enlisted,  belongs  to  him  con- 
spicuously. 

It  is  scarcely  Lord  Beaconsfield's  fault,  all  things 
considered,  that  his  career  has  not  been  in  its  main 
features  that  of  an  English  statesman,  but  rather  that 
of  a  foreign  political  adventurer.  An  unfair  standard 
is  applied  to  it  when  it  is  judged  by  the  tests  by 
which  we  try  politicians  of  English  blood  and  train- 
ing. The  Philippe  Daims,  the  Alberonis,  the  Ripper- 
das  of  countries  and  times  different  and  remote  from 
our  own,  are  the  politicians  with  whom  at  least  during 
a  great  part  of  his  public  life  he  may  most  naturally 
and  fairly  be  compared.  Among  political  adven- 
turers, admitting  the  lawfulness  of  the  calling,  he 
holds  an  intellectually  conspicuous,  and  even  by  com- 
parison a  morally  respectable  place.  The  hatred  of 
the  Whig  oligarchy  which  runs  through  the  Letters  of 
Runnymede,  and  which  has  inspired  many  a  gibe  and 
scoff  from  Lord  Beaconsfield's  lips  and  pen  during 
half  a  century,  is  probably  as  genuine  a  sentiment  as 
either  he  or  any  one  else  has  ever  entertained.  It 
springs  from  the  same  root  as  his  admiration  of  Bol- 
ingbroke.  A  personal  rule,  the  monarchy  of  a  patriot 


44  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

king  holding  himself  above  the  strife  of  party,  and 
therefore  beyond  its  control,  gives  the  adventurer  and 
the  favourite  opportunities  which  it  is  not  easy  to  find 
under  any  other  system.  It  opens  doors  which  an 
oligarchy,  Venetian  or  Whig,  tries  to  keep  closed. 
Lord  Beaconsfield  has  not  only  defended  Boling- 
broke's  doctrines  in  his  Letters  to  a  Noble  and 
Learned  Lord  in  Vindication  of  the  English  Consti- 
tution, and  elsewhere,  but  he  has  striven  in  later 
years  to  give  effect  to  them.  He  has  done  so,  it  is 
true,  by  the  instrumentality  of  that  very  system  of 
government  by  party,  which  in  his  more  candid  mo- 
ments he  decries,  and  of  that  aristocratic  class  for 
which  he  every  now  and  then  intimates  a  sort  of 
good-natured  contempt.  Circumstances  made  Lord 
Beaconsfield  a  political  soldier  of  fortune.  In  the 
reign  of  Queen  Anne  he  would  probably  have  been 
the  pamphleteer  of  a  faction.  Under  George  III. 
he  would  have  been  the  dependant  and  parliament- 
ary spokesman  of  a  great  noble,  as  Barre  was  of 
Lord  Shelburne,  whom  Lord  Beaconsfield  admires 
only  less  than  he  admires  Bolingbroke,  and  in  part 
for  the  same  reasons.  Under  the  reign  of  Queen 
Victoria  he  has  passed  through  both  these  embryc 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  45 

stages,  as  is  the  law  with  fully  developed  animals. 
He  has  been  the  pamphleteer  of  a  party,  and  the  par- 
liamentary spokesman  of  aristocratic  chiefs.  He  was 
the  Barre  of  Lord  George  Bentinck  and  of  Lord 
Derby.  But  he  has  brought  the  art  of  political  ad- 
venture to  a  higher  point  than  it  has  reached  in  Eng- 
land since  the  full  development  of  parliamentary  in- 
stitutions. Probably  two  things  were  needed  for  this 
perfect  and  final  success.  The  formation  under  the 
personal  and  hereditary  influences  which  we  have 
endeavoured  to  trace  of  a  typical  adventurer  was 
one  of  these  conditions.  The  reign  of  a  female  sove- 
reign was  the  other.  It  was  Queen  Anne  who  made 
Bolingbroke  possible.  Queen  Victoria  has  been  as 
essential  to  Lord  Beaconsfield.  The  faint  parody  of 
Bolingbroke's  career  and  doctrine  which  Lord  Bea- 
consfield has  been  able  to  exhibit  has  required  a  state 
of  things  resembling,  though  but  distantly,  that  which 
prevailed  under  the  latest  preceding  Queen  Regnant. 


II. 

FROM  1826  TO  1837, 

IN  the  preceding  pages  we  have  spoken  of  the 
race  and  parentage  of  Lord  Beaconsfield.  To  some 
minds  it  seems  impossible  that  you  can  say  that  a 
man  is  a  Jew  without  intending  to  reproach  him  for 
being  a  Jew.  Unfortunately,  the  strength  of  still- 
surviving  prejudices  makes  this  confusion  only  too 
natural ;  and  the  imputation  of  an  ungenerous  appeal 
to  hatreds  of  creed  and  race  cannot  be  avoided  by 
any  writer  who  discusses  the  character  of  the  present 
Prime  Minister.  If  Lord  Beaconsfield' s  political  ad- 
ventures could  be  truly  narrated  without  any  refer- 
ence to  his  Jewish  blood  and  to  the  inherited  quali- 
ties which  are  deeply  stamped  upon  his  nature,  phy- 
sical and  moral,  we  should  be  very  glad  to  keep  the . 
things  apart.  But  the  blood  is  the  life,  in  another 
sense  than  that  which  the  Hebrew  law-giver  attached 
to  the  phrase ;  and  the  secret  of  Lord  Beaconsfield's 
life  lies  in  his  Jewish  blood.  It  is  not  a  matter  for 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  47 

self-glorification,  though  it  seems  to  be  so  to  him  ;  it 
is  nof  a  matter  for  disparagement  and  contempt, 
though  both  his  assailants  and  eulogists  often  appear 
to  regard  it  as  such.  It  is  a  simple  question  of  fact 
and  of  natural  history.  So  with  the  characteristics 
which  two  thousand  years  of  persecution  and  suffer- 
ing have  impressed  upon  the  Jewish  Captivity  in 
Europe.  If  Israel  was  not  the  worse  for  what  it  had 
undergone,  cruelty  and  wrong-doing  would  be  merely 
physical  calamities.  If  a  man  loses  half  his  worth  on 
the  day  on  which  he  becomes  a  slave,  the  nation 
which  has  been  in  servitude  for  two  thousand  years 
is  not  likely  to  be  morally  the  better  for  the  experi- 
ence. That  the  Jews  have  imbibed  servile  vices  in 
nineteen  centuries  of  bondage  is  as  obvious  in  fact  as 
it  was  certain  in  theory.  That  freedom  will  bring  to 
them  the  virtues  of  freemen  we  do  not  doubt ;  at 
present  it  has  stopped  at  a  period  of  transition,  and 
has  brought  them  the  equivocal  qualities  of  freedmen. 
Their  persons  have  been  enfranchised,  but  not  their 
minds.  They  display  too  often  the  habits  of  a  manu- 
mitted slave.  It  is  not  matter  for  wonder  that  Epic- 
tetus  should  be  a  rarer  product  of  slavery  than  Nar- 
cissus. The  Venetian  is  almost  as  conspicuous  in 


48  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

Lord  Beaconsfield  as  the  Jew.  The  organization  is 
due  to  his  race.  The  environment  of  several  cen- 
turies, acting  upon  the  organization,  has  been  sup- 
plied by  the  republic  of  St.  Mark.  Lord  Beacons- 
field  has  always  discussed  English  politics  in  terms 
of  the  Venetian  state-system.  To  him  the  British 
aristocracy  are  Venetian  magnificoes ;  the  sovereign 
is  a  doge  whom  an  oligarchy  has  enslaved.  George 

III.  was  a  sort   of  Marino    Faliero  who   struggled 
against  the  bondage  by  which  an  usurping  oligarchy 
fettered  him ;  and  in  the  struggle,  which  has  Lord 
Beaconsfield's  intense  sympathy,  forfeited  not  his  life 
but  his  reason. 

Lord  Beaconsfield's  manhood  began  in  the  days 
of  George  IV.  •  and  the  preparatory  part  of  his 
career,  his  apprenticeship  in  literature  and  politics, 
extends  over  the  last  four  years  of  the  life  of  that 
sovereign  and  over  the  whole  of  the  reign  of  William 

IV.  His  parliamentary  life,  which  in  England  is  the 
only  form  of  political  life,  opens  with  the  Parliament 
which  was  assembled  on  the  accession  of  the  Queen. 
The  circumstances  of  the  time,   the  men  who  occu- 
pied conspicuous  positions  in  the  State,  and  the  evi- 


LORD    BEACONSI'IELD.  49 

dent  transition  which  was  impending  from  an  old  to 
a  new  era,  were  such  as  would  have  roused  the  ar- 
dour of  a  generous  and  humane  mind.  The  long 
Tory  domination,  which  had  been  marked  by  the  sel- 
fish foreign"  policy  of  Castlereagh  and  the  domestic 
oppression  of  Sidmouth,  by  political  prosecutions 
and  Peterloo  massacres,  was  obviously  drawing  to  a 
close.  Huskisson  had  begun  that  policy  of  Free 
Trade  which  twenty  years  later  was  to  receive  its 
full  development  at  the  hands  of  Peel ;  the  political 
emancipation  of  Nonconformists  and  of  Roman 
Catholics  was  obviously  at  hand,  and  formed  the 
subjects  of  ardent  strife ;  Parliamentary  Reform 
threatened  a  revolution  in  the  near  future.  It  was 
an  era  of  great  causes  and  struggling  principles, 
which  powerfully  appealed  to  all  minds  in  which  the 
love  of  freedom  and  the  sense  of  justice  were  strong, 
and  in  which  there  was  any  consciousness  of  power 
to  aid  the  right  cause  and  to  combat  the  wrong.  The 
young  Disraeli,  a  politician  in  his  scloolboy  days, 
felt  no  summons  to  the  field.  The  history  of  his  own 
race  did  not  bid  him  sympathize  with  those  who  suf- 
fered from  kindred  oppression.  The  dreadful  dis- 
tress among  the  poor  did  not  win  from  him  any  cry 
4 


50  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

of  indignation  nor  stir  him  to  any  efforts  for  its  miti- 
gation or  removal.  The  successive  Liberal  adminis- 
trations of  Lord  Grey  and  Lord  Melbourne,  with 
many  weaknesses  and  follies,  and  much  slothful  in- 
action, yet  unloosed  one  heavy  burden  after  another 
from  the  necks  of  the  English  people,  and  opened 
one  closed  pathway  after  another  to  the  energies  and 
talents  hitherto  denied  their  free  scope.  Lord  l!ea- 
consfield,  in  the  days  which  ought  to  have  been  those 
of  youthful  enthusiasm,  gave  no  help  to  the  work. 
He  watched  it  closely  ;  he  stood  by  and  railed  at 
those  who  were  doing  it,  striving  by  scoff  and  jeer  to 
discredit  them.  If  he  did  not  hinder  it,  it  was  for 
lack  of  power  and  not  for  lack  of  will.  The  presence 
of  Canning  and  Huskisson  in  the  Cabinet  of  Lord 
Liverpool  was  a  sign  that  the  era  in  which  it  had 
been  possible  for  Burke  to  be  the  political  dependent 
of  a  Marquis  of  Rockingham  and  a  Duke  of  Port- 
land, was  passing  away ;  and  the  Premiership  of 
Canning  confirmed  the  augury.  Yet  when  Canning 
was  persecuted  to  his  death  and  Huskisson  was 
driven  from  office,  no  word  of  rebuke  or  indignation 
rose  to  the  lips  of  the  young  candidate  for  fame.  To 
him,  at  a  period  when  every  ingenuous  and  sincere 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  5! 

mind  was  stirred  to  noble  thoughts  and  strenuous 
action,  politics  and  politicians  were  simply  the  theme 
of  literary  satire  or  a  field  for  personal  intrigue  and 
adventure.  At  a  time  when  in  literature  the  medita- 
tions of  Wordsworth  and  the  speculations  of  Cole- 
ridge, the  hardy  realism  of  Crabbe,  the  mystic  dreams 
of  Shelley,  the  generous  enthusiasm  of  Byron  in  his 
better  moods,  and  the  manly  historic  sense  of  Scott, 
had  breathed  a  new  and  healthier  soul  into  English 
imagination,  the  young  Disraeli  felt  no  contagious 
inspiration  of  nobleness,  and  took  his  place  among 
the  novelists  of  high  life  and  of  political  society,  with 
Theodore  Hook  and  the  author  of  Tremaine,  with 
Mrs.  Gore  and  Lady  Blessington.  A  free  and  gener- 
ous spirit  would  have  raised  itself  above  the  degrad- 
ing influences  of  a  servile  condition  and  ancestry. 
Lord  Beaconsfield,  in  his  boyhood,  as  in  his  man- 
hood and  old  age,  was  content  now  to  flatter,  now  to 
mock  and  gibe,  to  be  now  the  parasite  and  now  the 
bravo  of  the  great,  to  write  now  a  begging  and  now  a 
threatening  letter.  The  ten  years  which  preceded 
his  entrance  into  parliament  contained  the  promise 
which  has  been  fulfilled  in  the  forty  years  of  his  par- 
liamentary life. 


52  POLITICAL  ADVENTURES   OF 

Lord  Beaconsfield's  first  adventure  was  literary 
rather  than  political;  but  it  was  literature  with  a 
large  element  of  politics  in  it.  Vivian  Grey,  or 
rather  the  first  part  of  it,  which  is  alone  much  remem- 
bered now,  appeared  in  1826,  when  the  author  was 
just  of  age.  It  was  written  probably  in  his  latest 
boyhood.  Lord  Beaconsfield  affects  now  to  be 
ashamed  of  the  work,  which  he  says  that  he  has 
vainly  endeavoured  to  suppress.  He  speaks  of  it  as 
a  puerile  production ;  but  it  really  does  not  differ 
morally  or  intellectually  from  most  of  his  other  nov- 
els. The  survival  of  boyishness  in  Lothair  and  the 
premature  mannishness  of  Vivian  Grey  bring  both 
stories  to  about  the  same  level.  Apart  from  the  con- 
temporary allusions  with  which  each  work  is  filled, 
Vivian  Grey  might  have  been  the  child  of  Lord  Bea- 
consfield's old  age  and  Lothair  the  indiscretion  of  his 
youth.  The  work  of  the  sexagenarian  lacks  ripeness 
and  maturity ;  the  work  of  the  boy  has  no  tinge  of 
ingenuousness.  It  lacks  the  hue  of  virtue.  Rather 
the  advantage  is  in  this  respect  with  the  more  recent 
work,  which  has  not  the  unabashed  hardihood  of  the 
earlier.  In  Vivian  Grey,  however,  the  key-note  of 
Lord  Beaconsfield's  career  is  struck.  We  need  not 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD.  53 

tell  the  story  which  is  familiar  to  every  one.  The 
type  of  character  is  that  of  the  adventurer  bent  upon 
climbing  by  whatever  means  to  the  highest  point  of 
ambition.  He  fails,  and  there  is  a  good  deal  of 
virtuous  moralising  about  his  crimes  and  faults.  In 
Vivian  Grey,  as  in  Contarini  Fleming — the  person, 
we  mean,  and  not  the  novel — there  is  a  curious 
blending  of  Beaumarchais  and  of  Byron.  The  slip- 
pery adventurer,  who  is  not  much  above  the  moral  or 
intellectual  level  of  the  intriguing  slave  and  valet  of 
the  classical  and  French  comedy,  is  mixed  up  with  the 
grand  passions,  the  crime,  and  the  remorse  of  Lara 
and  the  Corsair ;  and  the  combination  is  not  a  little 
ridiculous.  But  the  basis  of  the  character  is  the  im- 
pudent schemer. 

The  story,  as  we  have  said,  or  rather  its  first  part, 
was  published  in  1826,  and  it  bears  some  traces  of 
the  time  of  its  production.  Lord  Liverpool  was 
Prime  Minister,  and  when  the  second  part  of  Vivian 
Grey  appeared,  he  had  been  succeeded  by  Mr.  Can- 
ning, of  whom,  and  of  Brougham,  and  Lord  Eldon, 
there  are  perhaps  traces  in  Mr.  Charlatan  Gas,  Mr. 
Foaming  Fudge,  and  Lord  Past  Century,  though  we 
have  the  names  only  and  not  the  men.  Who  Mr. 


54  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

Stapyltan  Toad  and  Mr.  Liberal  Snake  may  have 
been,  it  is  not  worth  while  to  inquire.  Sir  Chris- 
topher Mowbray,  who,  on  Liberal  Snake's  "presum- 
ing to  inform  him  what  rent  was,  damned  himself 
several  times  from  sheer  astonishment  at  the  impu- 
dence of  the  fellow,"  and  whose  "most  peculiar  char- 
acteristic was  an  inexplicable  habit  of  styling  political 
economists  French  smugglers,"  is  perhaps  the  liveliest 
sketch  in  the  book.  Sir  Christopher,  we  are  told, 
"  is  perfectly  aware  of  the  present  perilous  state  of 
the  country,  and  watches  with  the  greatest  interest 
all  the  plots  and  plans  of  this  enlightened  age.  The 
only  thing  which  he  does  not  exactly  comprehend  is 
the  London  University.  This  affair  really  puzzles 
the  worthy  gentleman,  who  could  as  easily  fancy  a 
county  member  not  being  a  freeholder,  as  a  univer- 
sity not  being  at  Oxford  or  Cambridge.  Indeed,  to 
this  hour,  the  old  gentleman  believes  that  the  whole 
business  is  a  hoax,  and  if  you  tell  him  that  .... 
there  are  actually  four  acres  of  very  valuable  land 
purchased  near  White  Conduit  Street  for  the  erection 
....  the  old  gentleman  looks  up  to  heaven,  as  if 
determined  not  to  be  taken  in,  and  leaning  back  in 
his  chair,  sends  forth  a  sceptical  and  smiling,  '  No  1 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  55 

no  !  no  !  that  won't  do.'  "  In  Sir  Christopher  Mow- 
bray  damning  French  wines,  Bible  Societies,  and  Mr. 
Huskisson,  surrounded  by  lecturing  political  econo- 
mists, and  incredulous  of  the  London  University  ;  in 
the  inarticulate  man  of  science,  Mr.  Macaw,  who  is 
contrasted  with  "  the  mealy-mouthed  professors  of 
the  Royal  Institution,  who  get  patronised  by  the 
blues — the  Lavoisiers  of  May  Fair,"  a  sneer  we  take  • 
it  at  Sir  Humphry  Davy  or  Faraday ;  in  Mr.  Stapyl- 
tan  Toad's  pamphlet  on  the  Corn  Laws,  "  which  ex- 
cited the  dire  indignation  of  the  Political  Economy 
Club  " — the  commencement  of  what  we  may  call 
the  Brougham  period  of  politics  may  be  noted.  The 
schoolmaster  began  to  get  abroad,  and  men  talked 
about  the  popularisation  of  science  and  the  diffusion 
of  useful  knowledge.  The  movement  which  may  be 
supposed  to  have  its  personification  in  the  contest 
between  Lord  Past  Century  and  Mr.  Liberal  Princi- 
ples had  its  weak  and  even  its  ludicrous  side.  Vivian 
Grey  cannot  be  said  to  give  a  full  picture  of  it  in  its 
earliest  stage ;  still  there  are  in  the  book  glimpses  of 
it,  drawn  in  a  sketchy  and  scratchy  manner,  but  show- 
ing a  conception  of  its  real  character. 

To  Lord  Beaconsfield,  as  a  boy,  the  situation  on 


56  POLITICAL  ADVENTURES   OF 

its  literary  side  seems  simply  to  have  offered  him  op- 
portunities as  a  satirist,  and  if  he  had  made  a  literary 
career  his  own,  this  mode  of  treating  the  society  of 
his  time  would  not  have  been  fairly  open  to  severe 
censure.  There  are  men  to  whom  the  cynical  view 
of  human  life  is  natural,  as  there  are  others  to  whom 
life  presents  itself  simply  in  its  artistic  aspects.  The 
indifference  of  Goethe  to  the  great  struggles  of  his 
age  showed  a  constitutional  defect  of  character ;  and 
the  mocking  temper  which  is  always  conspicuous  in 
Vivian  Grey,  and  is  unabated  in  Lothair,  is  not  an 
amiable  feature  of  youth  or  of  old  age.  If  Lord  Bea- 
consfield  had  been  content  to  play  the  part  of  a  gib- 
ing chorus  to  the  drama  passing  under  his  eyes,  it 
would  have  been  matter  for  regret  that  he  should  have 
seen  only  one  aspect  of  the  human  and  English  life 
of  his  time ;  but  that  too  ought  to  be  seen,  and  it 
can  be  seen  through  his  eyes.  For  other  phases  of 
".  we  must  trust  to  the  perceptions  of  other  intellects 
and  characters.  The  real  ignobleness  which  is  im- 
pressed on  Lord  Beaconsfield's  writings  and  political 
life  lies  in  this,  that  while  men  with  any  greatness  of 
character  withdraw  from  the  pursuits  and  associations 
for  which  they  feel  a  contempt,  Lord  Beaconsfield  has 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD.  57 

been  impelled  into  them  in  spite  of,  or  even  by,  this 
very  scorn.  The  meannesses  and  weaknesses  which 
he  ridiculed  he  felt  could  turn  to  the  account  of  his 
own  ambition.  The  satirist  was  also  an  adventurer. 

His  early  manhood  was  the  beginning  of  a  period 
which  seemed  to  promise  a  new  epoch.  The  Cabinet 
of  Lord  Liverpool  in  1826,  when  in  Vivian  Grey 
Lord  Beaconsfield  took  his  first  survey  of  English 
society  and  politics,  contained  two  men  of  genius  on 
whom  the  hatred  of  aristocratic  dulness  and  monopoly 
had  conferred  the  name  of  adventurers.  Mr.  Can- 
ning and  Mr.  Huskisson  had  fought  their  way  from 
difficult  and  inconsiderable  beginnings  to  high  places 
in  the  service  of  the  State.  Surrounded  by  heavy 
peers  and  squires,  in  a  Ministry  presided  over  by  the 
very  genius  of  decorous  respectability,  their  political 
fortunes  may  have  helped  to  fire  the  ambition  of  the 
younger  Disraeli,  who  perhaps  saw  a  Marquis  of 
Carabas  in  Lord  Liverpool  and  a  Vivian  Grey  in  Mr. 
Canning.  But  though  Canning  and  Huskisson,  and 
before  them  Burke,  were  stigmatized  as  adventurers, 
and  although  in  a  certain  sense  the  name  belongs  to 
them,  they  cannot  be  brought  into  the  same  class 
with  Lord  Beaconsfield.  With  a  truer  self-respect, 


58  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

Burke  perhaps  would  not  have  been  content  to  serve 
great  nobles,  and  to  be  rewarded  in  his  earlier  years 
with  a  private  secretaryship  under  Lord  Rockingham, 
and  in  his  maturer  manhood  with  an  office  outside  the 
Cabinet  into  which  Charles  Fox,  while  yet  a  youth, 
was  admitted.  Something  of  the  servility  which  the 
prevalence  of  an  aristocratic  system  produces  even 
in  genius  and  worth,  is  apparent  in  his  submission. 
But  Burke's  too  humble  attitude  was  redeemed  by 
passionate  political  convictions  and.  by  devoted  per- 
sonal attachments.  He  served  these  in  serving  his  great 
Whig  patrons.  Canning  never  failed  in  his  enthusiasm 
for  Pitt  and  in  his  steady  friendship  with  Jenkinson  ;  and 
Huskisson's  consistency  as  an  economic  statesman 
was  born  of  unwavering  conviction.  These  men  were 
adventurers  in  politics  only  in  the  sense  in  which  the 
man  who,  not  being  born  in  the  purple,  wins  his  way 
to  fortune  is  an  adventurer ;  or  as  the  founder,  by 
genius  a.nd  enterprise,  of  a  great  commercial  house, 
which  he  has  raised  from  low  beginnings  or  from 
nothing,  is  an  adventurer,  when  he  is  compared  with 
the  inheritor  of  a  business  that  has  dealings  with  all 
the  world.  In  the  sense  in  which  the  word  carries 
moral  odium  with  it,  as  implying  indifference  to  per- 


LOPD   BEACONSFIELD.  59 

sons  and  principles,  it  is  not  applicable  to  them. 
This  is  the  sense  in  which  it  is  used  when  it  is  inju- 
riously applied  to  Lord  Beaconsfield ;  and  this  use  of 
the  term,  we  fear,  his  career  too  conclusively  justifies. 
In  his  interpretation  of  the  motives  of  the  great  man 
whose  unworn  title  he  has  audaciously  borrowed, 
Lord  Beaconsfield  throws  a  strong  light  upon  his  own 
aims.  He  thinks  that  Burke's  passionate  denuncia- 
tion of  the  French  Revolution  was  simply  a  vehicle 
for  his  exploding  hatred  of  the  Whigs  whom  he  had 
served  for  hire,  and  who  had  kept  his  wages  from 
him.  When  Fox  was  admitted  to  the  Cabinet,  from 
which  he  was  excluded,  "  hard  necessity,"  says  Lord 
Beaconsfield,  "  made  Mr.  Burke  submit  to  the  yoke, 
but  the  humiliation  could  never  be  forgotten.  Pour- 
ing forth  the  vials  of  his  hoarded  vengeance  .... 
he  dashed  to  the  ground  the  rival  who  had  robbed 
him  of  his  hard-earned  greatness,"  and  "rent  in  twain 
the  oligarchy  that  had  dared  to  use  and  to  insult  him." 
We  quote  from  Sybil,  one  of  the  novels  of  Lord  Bea- 
consfield's  maturer  manhood.  Lord  Beaconsfield 
reads  his  own  political  spite  and  malice  into  the  ma- 
jestic though  disordered  movements  of  Burke's  genius. 
He  attributes  to  him  the  anger  of  a  discarded  and 


60  POLITICAL  ADVENTURES   OF 

slighted  servant.  He  fancies  that  the  author  of  the 
Appeal  from  the  New  to  the  Old  Whigs  was  animated 
by  the  neo- Judaic  hatred  of  a  Venetian  oligarchy. 

The  second  part  of  Vivian  Grey,  which  only  sur- 
vives in  a  dead-alive  union  with  the  first,  is  a  sort  of 
prose  Childe  Harold.  The  penitent  wanderings  of 
the  discomforted  adventurer  have  picturesque  and 
amusing  passages ;  but  the  political  allusions  are  few. 
Lord  Beaconsfield  has  himself  imitated  in  later  years 
the  policy  of  the  plebeian  minister  of  the  Grand 
Duke  of  Reisenburg,  who  took  care  to  distribute  offi- 
ces among  great  nobles,  so  that,  having  no  family  in- 
fluence of  his  own,  he  might  organize  the  family  in- 
fluence of  others.  In  this,  says  the  author  of  Vivian 
Grey,  "  he  resembles  the  Prime  Minister  of  a  neigh- 
bouring state,  whose  private  secretary  is  unable  to 
write  a  sentence,  almost  to  direct  a  letter,  but  he  is  a 
noble."  Mr.  Canning  was  then  Prime  Minister  of 
England,  and  Lord  George  Bentinck  was,  we  believe, 
his  private  secretary. 

In  1828  Lord  Beaconsfield  published  the  Adven- 
tures of  Captain  Popanilla.  One  of  the  most  re- 
markable things  about  this  work  is  the  fact  that  the 
author  has  forgotten  that  he  ever  wrote  it.  In  the 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  6t 

general  preface  prefixed  to  one  of  the  later  editions 
of  Lothair,  Lord  Beaconsfield  speaks  of  Contarini 
Fleming  as  his  second  work.  It  was  really,  at  the 
very  least,  his  fourth, — Popanilla  and  the  Young 
Duke,  a  three-volume  novel,  coming  between  it  and 
Vivian  Grey.  Lord  Beaconsfield  appears  to  labour 
under  the  curious  notion  that  by  suppressing  a  pas- 
sage or  a  book  he  makes  it  never  to  have  been,  and 
becomes  justified  in  asserting  that  no  such  thing  was 
ever  written.  When  in  1864  a  question  was  raised 
as  to  the  tyrannicidal  doctrines  attributed  to  Mazzini, 
and  the  complicity  of  a  subordinate  member  of  Lord 
Palmerston's  Government  in  the  enterprises  of  the 
great  Italian  revolutionist,  Lord  Beaconsfield  was 
virtuously  indignant,  and  did  not  rest  until  the  offend- 
ing member  had  been  cut  off.  In  the  meantime 
some  curious  busybody — perhaps  the  person  who 
afterwards  traced  a  celebrated  eulogy  on  the  Duke 
of  Wellington  to  M.  Thiers, — got  hold  of  a  copy  of 
the  Revolutionary  Epick,  and  quoted  thence  some 
lines  which  justified  tyrannicide  as  explicitly  as  Maz- 
zini  was  supposed  to  have  done.  To  clear  himself 
from  this  accusation,  and  to  enable  the  public  to 
judge  between  him  and  his  calumniators,  Lord  Bea- 


62  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

consfield  promptly  republished  the  poem,  leaving  out 
the  lines  impugned.  More  recently  he  has  adopted 
a  still  more  thorough  procedure.  In  the  preface  of 
which  we  have  spoken,  he  intimates  that  between 
1832  and  1837  he  wrote  nothing  at  all.  "  There  was 
yet  a  barren  interval  of  five  years  of  my  life,  so  far  as 
literature  is  concerned."  The  Revolutionary  Epick, 
which  was  published  in  1834,  is  thus  got  rid  of  in  the 
most  effectual  manner.  This  is  hurling  his  lyre  to 
limbo  with  a  vengeance.  "  I'll  disown  you,  I'll  dis- 
inherit you,  I'll  unget  you,"  says  Sir  Anthony  Abso- 
lute to  his  son.  Lord  Beaconsfield  apparently  thinks 
that  by  disowning  he  can  unwrite  such  of  his  works 
as  he  no  longer  finds  it  agreeable  to  acknowledge. 
He  can  not  only  make  them  cease  to  be,  but  cause 
them  never  to  have  been.  But  this  is  a  feat  which  it 
is  proverbially  beyond  the  power  of  omnipotence  to 
accomplish— /<z<:2V/;«  infectum  facere  nequit.  Since 
he  achieved  respectability,  Lord  Beaconsfield  has 
thought  it  necessary  to  affect  a  certain  degree  of 
penitence  for  having  written  Vivian  Grey.  He  emu- 
lates the  contrition  of  Chaucer  and  Dryden.  Such, 
he  represents,  was  his  sense  of  the  demerits  of  the 
work,  that  when  his  second  novel  was  published,  he 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  63 

did  not  describe  himself  as  the  author  of  that  story. 
The  fact  is  that  Popanilla,  which  was  published  in 
1828 ;  the  Young  Duke,  which  was  published  in 
1831;  Alroy,  which  was  published  in  1833;  and 
Venetia,  which  was  published  in  1837,  were  all  de- 
scribed on  the  title-pages  as  by  "  the  author  of  Vivian 
Grey."  They  were  recommended  to  the  public  by 
that  fact.  Contarini  Fleming,  which,  as  we  have 
said,  was  neither  the  second  nor  the  third,  but  the 
fourth  of  Lord  Beaconsfield's  works,  is  the  only  one 
on  the  title-page  of  which  Vivian  Grey  is  not  men- 
tioned. This  work,  afterwards  called  a  "  psychologi- 
cal romance,"  was  originally  announced  as  a  "  psy- 
chological autobiography."  There  was  therefore  an 
obvious  propriety  in  veiling  its  real  authorship. 
Lord  Beaconsfield,  however,  having  persuaded  him- 
self that  Vivian  Grey  was  repented  of  as  soon  as 
written,  proceeds  to  make  a  series  of  circumstantial 
statements  in  corroboration  of  that  fact.  The  origin 
and  growth  of  myths  is  ihus  pleasingly  illustrated  in 
an  example  to  which  historic  inquirers  ought  to  attach 
some  value.  A  fixed  idea  generates  a  detailed  nar- 
rative to  support  and  confirm  it.  The  idea  gives 
credit  to  the  narrative,  and  the  narrative  supports  the 


64  POLITICAL  ADVENTURES   OF 

idea,  and  yet  both  are  fiction.  It  is  interesting  to 
observe  the  processes  which  have  created  religions  in 
operation  before  our  very  eyes.  A  myth,  it  should 
be  observed,  does  not  involve  conscious  falsehood, 
but  only  a  creative  imagination  embodying  its  con- 
ceptions in  narratives,  and  straightway  believing  the 
narrative  because  it  embodies  its  conceptions. 

There  are,  of  course,  reasons  why  Lord  Beacons- 
field  should  be  desirous  of  ignoring  Popanilla  and 
the  Revolutionary  Epick,  and  should  regret  that 
Vivian  Grey's  tenacity  of  life  has  resisted  all  at- 
tempts to  smother  it.  Popanilla  does  not  respect 
the  foundations  of  society,  and  there  are  passages  in 
it  which  the  future  leader  of  the  Protectionist  party 
might  be  excused  for  wishing  to  deal  with,  as  the  as- 
sailant of  Mazzini  and  Mr.  Stansfeld  dealt  with  the 
tyrannicidal  preachments  of  the  Revolutionary  Epick. 
It  is  impossible  to  avoid  some  association  of  Popa- 
nilla with  its  author.  The  shipwrecked  adventurer, 
brought  from  the  island  of  Fantaisie  to  the  coast  of 
Vraibleusia,  and  mingling  with  the  crowds  in  the 
streets  of  Hubbabub,  was  not  more  foreign  to  the 
scenes  and  people  among  whom  he  found  himself, 
than  the  younger  Disraeli  in  the  politics  and  society 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  6<J 

of  London.  The  description  of  the  statue,  of  the 
aboriginal  inhabitants,  and  of  the  twelve  managers, 
in  which  the  sovereign,  the  landed  aristocracy,  and 
the  Cabinet  were  ridiculed,  is  perhaps  the  cleverest 
portion  of  Popanilla.  In  the  arrangements  which  the 
aboriginal  inhabitant  makes  for  forcing  his  own  agri- 
cultural produce  on  the  inhabitants  of  Vraibleusia,  the 
doctrine  and  practice  of  protection  to  native  industry 
is  openly  ridiculed.  It  is  clear  that  at  this  turn  of 
his  life  he  was  fully  possessed  of  the  arguments  in 
favour  of  Free  Trade,  and  understood  them  more 
clearly  than  might  have  been  expected.  His  eulogies 
in  other  works  on  the  economic  doctrines  which 
Shelburne  and  the  younger  Pitt  derived  from  Adam 
Smith,  show  that  until  political  exigencies  made  the 
advocacy  of  protection  expedient,  Lord  Beaconsfield 
was  a  free-trader.  His  phrases  vary  as  occasion  sug- 
gests, but  his  general  doctrine  is  unmistakeable. 
The  story  is  a  clever  boyish  parody  and  imitation, 
which  shows  enough  acquaintance  with  the  terms  of 
the  political,  philosophical,  and  religious  fashions  of 
le  time  to  enable  the  author  to  make  fun  of  them. 
>rd  Beaconsfield  has  never  thought  it  necessary  to 
much  deeper  into  matters  than  phrases  and  catch- 


66  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

words  will  lead  him.  Mankind,  in  his  view,  is  gov- 
erned by  phrases  and  catchwords,  and  to  study  thor- 
oughly what  you  do  not  intend  to  treat  thoroughly 
would  be  a  waste  of  time.  Lord  Beaconsfield  has 
never  treated  either  his  subjects  or  the  public  seriously, 
and  the  public  has  been  content  to  laugh  at  and  with 
him  until  the  present  moment,  when  it  may  begin  to 
think  itself  of  the  crackling  of  thorns  under  the 
pot. 

In  such  exercises  as  these,  and  in  the  travels  in 
Europe  and  the  East  to  which  we  have  referred,  Lord 
Beaconsfield  prepared  himself  for  that  public  life  in 
which  he  was  anxious  to  play  a  conspicuous  part. 
In  the  preface  to  Lothair,  of  which  we  have  before 
spoken,  he  lays  claim  to  a  sort  of  political  consistency. 
He  represents  himself  as  having  through  life  avowed 
certain  principles,  which  were  the  result  of  early 
study  and  meditation.  "  Born  in  a  library  and  trained 
from  early  childhood  by  learned  men  who  did  not 
share  the  passions  and  prejudices  of  our  political  and 
social  life,  I  had  imbibed  on  some  subjects  conclu- 
sions different  from  those  which  generally  prevail, 
and  especially  with  reference  to  the  history  of  our 
own  country."  Lord  Beaconsfield  then  proceeds  to 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  67 

set  forth,  in  language  suitable  to  a  man  who  had  been, 
and  hoped  to  be  again,  Prime  Minister  of  England, 
and  who  was  still  leader  of  the  Conservative  party, 
some  ghostly  shadow  of  the  old  doctrines  about 
the  Doge  and  the  Venetian  oligarchy,  though  those 
familiar  names  are  never  mentioned.  He  was  not, 
however,  so  exclusively  the  recluse  student  working 
out  his  own  solitary  conclusions  in  his  natal  library 
and  among  the  learned  men  who  trained  his  early 
childhood,  as  might  be  fancied  from  the  description. 
The  discipline  of  a  dissenting  boarding-school  and 
the  bustle  of  an  attorney's  office  had  their  share  with 
the  learned  men  who  were  free  from  the  passions  and 
prejudices  of  our  political  and  social  life,  in  the  for- 
mation of  the  young  Disraeli's  mind  and  character. 
Familiarity  with  these  passions  and  prejudices,  wher- 
soever  derived,  is  more  conspicuous  in  Vivian  Grey, 
Popanilla,  and  the  Young  Duke  than  new  readings  of 
English  history  and  theories  of  the  English  constitu- 
tion. These  appear  later  1te£.,ord  Beaconsfield's  life 
and  writings.  The  library  ancT  the  learned  men  have 
probably  had  very  little  to  do  with  them,  except  in 
furnishing  an  imposing  and  half-barbarous  jargon  of 
magnificoes  and  doges,  in  which  the  new  doctrines 


68  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

were  expressed  for  the  greater  bewilderment  of  the 
pull  lie,  prepared  to  take  omne  ignotum  pro  magnifico. 
Lord  Beaconsfield's  view  of  the  British  Constitution 
at  ihe  commencement  of  his  political  adventures  may 
be  briefly  expressed.  It  was  a  view  from  the  outside. 
Its  high  walls  and  closed  doors  and  barred  windows 
were  the  objects  presented  to  his  gaze,  and  he  re- 
solved to  surmount  them.  In  a  man  who  has  a  high 
conception  of  politics,  and  who  is  eager  .to  level  un- 
just barriers  that  stand  in  the  way  of  others  as  well 
as  himself,  attack  upon  oligarchic  monopoly  and 
privilege  may  be  commended  as  a  noble  and  gener- 
ous enterprise.  To  Lord  Beaconsfield,  however,  by 
his  repeated  confession,  and  still  more  emphatically 
by  the  clear  tenor  of  his  life  and  writings,  politics 
have  been  simply  an  exciting  game  in  which  he  de- 
sired to  take  part,  and  politicians  have  formed  an 
exclusive  society  into  which  he  was  resolved  to  force 
himself.  The  exclusion  which  he  resented  was  the 
exclusion  of  himself. 

There  has  been  much  discussion  as  to  whether 
Lord  Beaconsfield  made  his  first  appearance  in  poli- 
tics as  a  Tory,  or  as  a  Radical,  or  as  a  Tory-Radical. 
The  fact  is  that  he  was  an  anti-Whig,  and  his  Tory- 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  69 

ism,  or  Radicalism,  or  Tory-Radicalism,  were  only  so 
many  phases  of  his  opposition  to  the  Whigs  and  their 
oligarchical  beati possidentes.  We  need  not  go  into 
the  details  of  Lord  Beaconsfield's  candidature  for 
High  Wycombe,  and  his  unsuccessful  overtures  to 
other  constituencies,  until  his  election  for  Maidstone 
in  1837.  The  story  has  been  sufficiently  told  in 
Mr.  Macknight's  able  biography,  and  is  repeated 
with  more  detail  in  the  carefully  compiled  volume 
entitled,  "  Benjamin  Disraeli,  Earl  of  Beaconsfield." 
He  stood  twice  in  1832  for  the  first-named  borough; 
issued,  in  hope  of  a  vacancy  which  did  not  occur,  an 
address  to  the  electors  of  Marylebone  in  1833  ;  and 
stood  unsuccessfully  against  the  late  Mr.  Labouchere 
for  Taunton  in  1835.  In  the  latter  year  he  first  ap- 
peared distinctly  as  a  Conservative.  Up  till  then  he 
had  hovered  between  Toryism  and  Radicalism,  advo- 
cating the  measures  proposed  by  Mr.  Hume  and  Mr. 
O'Connell  on  grounds  drawn  from  the  writings  and 
the  conduct  of  Bolingbroke  and  Sir  William  Wynd- 
ham,  who  were  in  favour  of  triennial  parliaments,  and 
who,  for  good  reasons,  had  certainly  never  said  any- 
thing against  vote  by  ballot  or  the  repeal  of  the  taxes 
on  knowledge.  In  1834  Lord  Beaconsfield  appears 


70  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

to  have  been  still  hesitating  between  the  two  ele- 
ments of  his  Tory-Radicalism.  According  to  a  pas- 
sage in  the  late  Mr.  Greville's  diary,  he  was  unde- 
cided whether  to  seek  his  Marquis  of  Carabas  in 
Lord  Chandos  or  in  Lord  Durham.  One  thing  only 
is  clear.  Lord  Beaconsfield  was  bent  on  a  political 
career,  and  found  that  the  exclusiveness  of  the  Whig 
oligarchy  was  the  main  obstacle  in  his  way.  His 
hatred  of  the  Whigs  was,  we  believe,  genuine,  and  it 
dressed  itself  up  in  the  guise  of  a  principle.  Politi- 
cal adventurers  who  are  not  content  to  be  the  mere 
servants  and  lackeys  of  a  great  lord,  have  usually 
played  either  one  or  other  of  two  games.  They  may 
be  courtiers  or  they  may  be  demagogues  ;  they  may 
flatter  the  mob,  or  they  may  be  the  sycophants  of  the 
Crown.  They  sometimes  play  these  parts  in  succes- 
sion, as  Wilkes  did.  They  have  not  often  combined 
them  at  one  and  the  same  time.  This,  however,  is 
what  Lord  Beaconsfield  has  done.  The  Crown  and 
the  multitude  are  set  forth  as  natural  allies  against  a 
rapacious,  recreant,  and  haughty  parliament.  The 
Reform  Act  is  described  as  issuing  out  of  "  the  popu- 
lar frenzy  of  a  mean  and  selfish  revolution,  which 
emancipated  neither  the  Crown  nor  the  people." 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  7 1 

The  cause  for  which  Hampden  died  in  the  field  and 
Sydney  on  the  scaffold  was  the  cause  of  the  Venetian 
republic.  From  the  very  beginning  of  his  career, 
Lord  Beaconsfield  has  doubled  the  apparently  incon- 
sistent parts  of  king's  friend  and  mobsman.  Under 
different  conditions,  and  with  a  different  ultimate  ob- 
ject, he  has  played  the  same  game  in  England  as 
Louis  Napoleon  played  in  France.  It  is  singular, 
however,  that  his  political  detestation  of  the  aristoc- 
racy has  been  accompanied  by  an  enormous  social 
veneration  of  them.  As  a  novelist,  he  is  never  easy 
when  he  is  in  any  other  society.  His  veneration,  it 
is  true,  is  mainly  for  their  houses,  their  furniture,  their 
grounds,  and  their  liveries.  His  novels  abound  in 
descriptions  of  the  mansions  and  parks  of  great  peo- 
ple, all  done  in  the  style  of  a  great  auctioneer's  ad- 
vertisements. The  tone  and  phrases  of  the  house- 
furnisher,  the  appraiser,  and  the  salesman  run  through 
all  the  still  life  of  his  novels.  A  tailor  matching  pat- 
terns, unrolling  his  sample -book,  and  combining  a 
sweet  thing  in  waistcoats  with  an  article  he  can  rec- 
ommend for  trousers,  is  the  image  which  Lord  Bea- 
consfield's  inventory  of  the  dresses  of  his  heroes  re- 
calls. To  him  the  Emperor  Hadrian  is  almost  at  the 


72  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

head  of  mankind  as  being  "  the  most  sumptuous 
character  of  antiquity."  A  love  of  power,  wealth, 
and  finery,  and  a  mixed  hatred  and  reverence  of  the 
persons  who  possess  them,  is  the  common  inspiration 
of  Lord  Beaconsfield's  politics  and  of  his  literature. 
In  the  curious  mixture  of  servility  and  of  mockery 
which  runs  through  his  description  of  the  lives  and 
conversation  of  the  high  nobility,  where  reverence 
ends  and  contempt  begins  it  is  impossible  to  say. 
They  are  both  obviously  there,  and,  inconsistent  as 
they  seem,  they  are  inextricably  mixed. 

This  habit  of  mind,  this  inability  to  see  much  ex- 
cept the  results  of  a  large  income  and  a  patronage 
bestowed,  wholly  regardless  of  expense,  on  the  tailor, 
the  jeweller,  the  house-furnisher,  and  the  ornamental 
gardener,  are  as  the  tares  which  choke  the  wheat  in 
Lord  Beaconsfield's  writings.  There  are  every  now 
and  then  glimpses  of  better  feelings  and  of  a  more 
disinterested  enjoyment  of  what  is  beautiful  in  nature 
and  in  human  life ;  but  these  things  are  evanescent. 
The  angry  sense  of  exclusion  and  the  greed  of  coveted 
possession  deform  and  discolour  all  but  here  and 
there  a  few  pages.  Apart  from  the  purely  satirical 
passages,  the  most  natural  and  skilful  touches  are 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  73 

those  in  which  the  talk  and  games  of  boys,  their  brag 
and  self-confidence,  their  absolute  theories  of  life  and 
purposes  of  action  unqualified  by  a  dream  of  failure, 
are  set  forth  ;  with  a  certain  humour  that  is  not  with- 
out its  veiled  pathos.  There  is  some  delicacy,  too, 
mixed  with  much  fine  writing  and  superfine  sentiment 
of  the  Minerva  press  school  in  Lord  Beaconsfield's 
heroines.  Women  do  not  enter  into  competition 
with  men,  and  there  is  no  sense  therefore  of  struggle 
with  rivals  fortunately  placed,  to  embitter  his  views 
of  them.  On  the  whole,  the  sort  of  mixture  of  a  fit- 
ful generosity  and  nobleness,  with  the  recklessness 
of  the  brigand  and  pirate  of  the  circulating  library, 
marks  Lord  Beaconsfield's  earlier  stories. 

In  these  social  feelings,  the  hatred  of  a  plebeian  and 
of  a  man  of  foreign  origin  and  despised  race,  for  an 
aristocracy  whose  power  he  would  have  liked  to 
share,  whose  houses,  grounds,  clothes,  and  jewellery 
he  admired,  and  in  whose  society  he  pined  to  live, 
we  get  the  inspiration  of  Lord  Beaconsfield's  policy, 
clothed  in  phrases  borrowed  from.  Bolingbroke.  In 
1834  he  was  elected  a  member  of  the  Westminster 
Reform  Club,  and  in  the  following  year  he  appeared 
at  Taunton  as  the  candidate  of  the  Conservative 


74  POLITICAL  ADVENTURES   OF 

Club  and  the  supporter  of  Sir  Robert  Peel.  These 
are  facts  not  involving  greater  inconsistencies  than 
those  which  mark  every  period  of  his  life.  He  has 
been  everything  except  a  Whig,  not  only  in  succes- 
sion, but  simultaneously.  His  conflict  with  O'Con- 
nell,  arising  out  of  a  speech  made  during  his  unsuc- 
cessful candidature  at  Taunton,  has  a  certain  interest 
as  illustrating  the  qualities  which  were  displayed  by 
Lord  Beaconsfield  later  in  life  in  his  assaults  on  Sir 
Robert  Peel.  He  had  courted  O'ConnelFs  political 
support  when  he  was  a  candidate  three  years  before 
at  High  Wycombe.  He  had  indulged  in  private  ex- 
pressions of  esteem  and  regard,  which  amounted  to  a 
solicitation  of  O'Connell's  friendship.  But  O'Con- 
nell,  after  denouncing  the  base,  bloody,  and  brutal 
Whigs,  was  supposed  to  have  entered  into  the  agree- 
ment with  them  known  as  the  Tichfield  House  Com- 
pact. Next  to  his  love  of  the  Jews,  Lord  Beacons- 
field's  strongest  passion,  as  we  have  seen,  has  been 
hatred  of  the  Whigs  ;  and  O'Connell  and  Lord  Mel- 
bourne's administration  were  both  denounced  in 
terms  which  our  readers  would  not  thank  us  for  re- 
peating. O'Connell  repaid  his  assailant  in  kind. 
The  license  of  political  and  personal  controversy  was 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  75 

more  excessive  than  it  is  now;  but  it  may  be  safely 
said  that  English  gentlemen,  of  the  attainments  and 
intellectual  power  of  either  of  the  two  combatants, 
could  not  have  indulged  in  the  reciprocal  ribaldry 
and  insult  with  which  they  bespattered  each  other. 
O'Connell  and  Mr.  Disraeli,  however,  came  each 
from  a  servile  race  and  a  proscribed  and  insulted 
religion.  Through  no  fault  of  their  own,  the  vices 
of  slaves  were  in  their  hearts  and  found  expression 
in  their  tongues.  Self-respect  was  difficult  to  men 
whose  ancestors  through  a  long  course  of  centuries 
had  been  taught  to  cringe  under  a  yoke,  and  who, 
when  they  did  not  speak  low  and  in  a  bondsman's 
key,  exploded  in  violent  and  indecent  insults.  We 
have  spoken  of  the  vices  of  slaves  as  illustrated  in 
this  reciprocal  vituperation.  We  ought  rather  to 
have  said  that  they  displayed  the  vices  of  freedmen, 
from  whom  the  restraints  of  servitude  have  been  re- 
moved, but  who  have  not  yet  learned  the  moral  re- 
straints of  personal  self-respect. 

The  parallel  does,  however,  some  injustice  to 
O'Connell.  With  some  of  the  vices  of  the  slave,  the 
railing  and  licentious  tongue,  and  the  slippery  and 
tricky  nature,  he  combined  the  large  and  generous 


76  POLITICAL  ADVENTURES   OF 

impulses  of  the  patriot.  Whether  he  had  the  self- 
denial  which  would  have  accepted  poverty,  or  exile, 
or  unpopularity  for  a  just  but  losing  cause,  is  fairly 
open  to  question.  There  are  few  traces  in  him  of 
the  temperament  of  the  hero  or  of  the  martyr.  But, 
though  he  had  not  the  sensitive  and  exacting  honoui 
which  would  shrink  from  a  paid  and  retained  patri- 
otism ;  though  he  did  not  feel  that  the  suspicion  of 
selling  himself  to  the  advocacy  of  aims  which  he 
knew  to  be  illusions  was  at  any  cost  to  be  shunned  ; 
there  is  no  reason  whatsoever  for  thinking  that  the 
paid  patriot  would  ever  have  been  the  purchased 
apostate.  Justice  and  freedom,  his  country  and  his 
church,  were  not  simply  articles  of  merchandise  in 
which  he  carried  on  a  trade  :  they  were  to  him,  in 
spite  of  many  meaner  and  debasing  elements,  a 
sacred  inspiration.  This  large  and  generous  nature 
could  feel  the  fascination  of  a  great  and  noble  cause. 
The  mixture  of  the  buffoon  and  the  mountebank  with 
the  patriot  and  the  national  liberator,  belongs  to  the 
transition  period  in  Irish  history  and  character.  The 
old  servitude  and  the  newer  freedom  blend  in  this 
ambiguous  result. 

The  disgrace  of  this  gladiatorial  combat  of  manu- 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  77 

mitted  slaves  rests  largely  with  the  nation  which,  by 
proscribing  them,  their  race,  and  their  faith,  helped 
to  make  them  what  they  were.  The  penalty  rests 
with  it  too.  Sinister  interests,  and  powerful  influ- 
ences which  are  not  English,  sway  English  politics. 
Finance  and  religion  are  cosmopolitan,  and  men 
whose  country  is  their  counting-house  indirectly 
govern  us.  The  rulers  of  the  synagogue  are  more 
largely  than  is  suspected  the  rulers  of  England. 
Lord  Beaconsfield's  language  to  O'Connell,  as  his 
language  afterwards  to  Peel,  passing  at  once  from 
fulsome  eulogy  to  unmeasured  vituperation,  simply 
exhibits  the  transition  from  the  obsequiousness  of 
the  mercenary  seeking  a  place  to  the  insolence  of 
the  mercenary  refused  or  dismissed  from  one.  In  the 
Letters  of  Runnymede,  which  appeared  in  the  follow- 
ing year,  these  qualities  are  very  conspicuous.  The 
author  directly  addresses  the  leading  Whig  statesmen 
of  the  day  by  name  in  terms  of  personal  insult,  which 
do  not  differ  from  the  abuse  with  which  a  street- 
beggar  who  has  been  denied  alms,  will  sometimes 
pursue  a  passer-by. 

In  1834,  as  we   have   seen   from   Mr.   Greville's 
Diary,   Mr.    Disraeli    was    hesitating   between    two 


78  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

patrons.  There  was  a  chance  of  his  entering  Parlia- 
ment as  a  Radical  by  Lord  Durham's  aid,  and  some 
hope  of  doing  so  as  a  Tory  by  the  help  of  Lord 
Lyndhurst.  From  whatever  motive,  the  latter  course 
was  decided  upon  ;  and  Mr.  Disraeli  went  down  to 
Taunton  in  1835.  Possibly  his  friendship  for  Lord 
Lyndhurst  decided  him.  In  the  preface  to  Lothair, 
which  contains  Lord  Beaconsfield's  latest  confes- 
sions, he  speaks  of  Lord  Lyndhurst  as  one  of  the  two 
best  friends  he  ever  had.  Lord  Beaconsfield  is  just 
the  man  to  appreciate  the  brilliant  intellectual  gifts 
of  Lyndhurst,  and  he  passes  what  may  be  a  just 
eulogy  upon  the  qualities  he  displayed  in  private  life, 
"  the  tenderness  of  his  disposition,  the  sweetness  of 
his  temper,  his  ripe  scholarship,  and  the  playfulness 
of  his  bright  and  airy  spirit."  Lord  Lyndhurst's  os- 
tentatious indifference  to  political  principles,  and  the 
readiness  with  which  he  took  the  large  retaining  fee 
of  professional  and  political  employment  and  promo- 
tion, by  which  he  was  bought  off  from  the  Liberal 
side  in  politics,  and  became  the  advocate  of  Tory 
principles,  are  not  likely  to  have  impressed  Lord 
Beaconsfield  unfavourably.  Scruples,  he  has  said,  are 
usually  the  creatures  of  perplexity,  not  of  con- 


LORD   BBACONSFIELD.  79 

science ;  and  he  would  have  thought  Lord  Lyndhurst 
a  fool  to  have  thrown  away  his  chances.  The  friend- 
ship of  the  two  men  had  one  political  result  in  the 
Letter  to  a  Noble  and  Learned  Lord  in  Vindication 
of  the  English  Constitution,  which  was  published  in 
1835,  the  year  following  that  in  which  the  Revolu- 
tionary Epick  appeared.  The  Vindication  does 
not  rank  as  a  permanent  contribution  to  English 
political  philosophy.  It  is  a  queer  medley  of  Burke 
and  Bolingbroke,  whose  streams  of  thought  do  not 
readily  mix,  with  that  sort  of  Tory-Democratic  doc- 
trine in  which  renegade  Radicals  often  endeavour  to 
hide  their  apostasy. 

The  second  of  the  two  best  friends  Lord  Beacons- 
field  ever  had  was  "  the  inimitable  D'Orsay,  the  most 
accomplished  and  the  most  engaging  character  that 
has  figured  in  this  century,  who  with  the  form  and 
universal  genius  of  an  Alcibiades,  combined  a  bril- 
liant wit  and  a  heart  of  quick  affection,  and  who, 
placed  in  a  public  position,  would  have  displayed  a 
courage,  a  judgment,  and  a  commanding  intelligence 
which  would  have  ranked  him  with  the  leaders  of 
mankind."  Henrietta  Temple,  which  was  dedicated 
to  Count  D'Orsay,  contains  a  portrait  of  him  under 


8o  POLITICAL  ADVENTURES    OF 

the  name  of  Count  Alcibiades  de  Mirabel,  from 
which  one  may  judge  of  the  qualities  which  in  Lord 
Beaconsfield's  view  went  to  form  the  most  accom- 
plished and  engaging  character  of  this  century.  It 
might  be  unfair  to  judge  the  hero  by  the  hero-wor- 
shipper ;  but  it  is  not  unfair  to  judge  the  hero-wor- 
shipper by  the  hero,  or  at  any  rate  by  his  idealised 
conception  of  the  hero.  Count  Alcibiades  de  Mirabel 
is  a  glorified  Beau  Brummel ;  and  although  the  fault 
may  be  in  Lord  Beaconsfield's  portraiture,  the  type 
of  character  is  not  doubtful.  A  dashing  and  showy 
social  adventurer,  who  would  have  been  a  first-rate 
drawing-master,  music-master,  writing-master,  French 
master,  elocution-master,  riding-master,  courier,  tailor, 
or  cook — a  master  of  all  those  arts  by  which  "  our  life 
is  only  drest  for  show :  mean  handiwork  of  craftsman, 
cook,  or  groom  " — is  to  Lord  Beaconsfield,  in  his 
advanced  age,  the  most  accomplished  and  engaging 
character  and  universal  genius  of  the  century.  The 
impulses  which  inspire  the  reason,  and  direct  the  con- 
science, and  shape  the  life  to  nobler  ends  than  politi- 
cal advancement  or  social  enjoyment,  are  left  out  of 
his  reckoning.  His  gaze  is  fixed  on  the  D'Orsays, 
and  the  Tom  Buncombes,  and  the  Louis  Napoleons, 


LORD   BEACONSBIELD.  8 1 

with  whom  he  associated  at  Gore  House,  the  spend- 
thrifts and  adventurers  and  conspirators  who  found 
themselves  in  salons  to  which  "gentlemen"  only 
(gentlemen  as  distinguished  from  ladies)  went. 
Prince  Louis  Napoleon  conquered  a  precarious  re- 
spectability by  his  reception  at  Windsor.  Lord  Bea- 
consfield  achieved  a  similar  position  when  he  was 
acknowledged  by  the  late  Lord  Derby.  His  properly 
political  life  begins  with  his  entrance  into  Parliament 
in  1837  on  the  accession  of  the  Queen.  His  literary 
career  was  at  the  same  time  brought  to  a  pause  of 
seven  years,  which  was  broken  in  1844  by  the  publi- 
cation of  Coningsby.  The  two  stories,  Venetia  and 
Henrietta  Temple,  published  in  1837,  and  dedicated 
to  Lord  Lyndhurst  and  Count  D'Orsay,  have  no  poli- 
tical motive  or  character.  They  are  attempts  in  pure 
art,  and  cannot  be  deemed  successful  save  in  a  few 
strokes  of  social  satire.  Byron  is  out-Byronized, 
and  the  Werther  period  of  Goethe  out-Werthered. 
In  Venetia,  Caduras  and  Herbert  are  recognisable  as 
Byron  and  Shelley,  not  by  any  truth  of  portraiture, 
but  by  plagiarism  from  their  real  lives.  Lord  Bea- 
consfield's  dealings  with  the  grand  passions  always 

suggest  the  Porte  St.  Martin  and  the  Surrey  Theatre. 
6 


82  POLITICAL  ADVENTURES   OF 

His  heroic  vein  lies  perilously  near  to  the  mock 
heroic.  There  is  a  genuine  breath  of  social  and  poli- 
tical satire  animating  his  works  which  might  have 
earned  him  a  more  honourable  place  in  English  liter- 
ature than  the  parliamentary  career,  on  the  threshold 
of  which  we  leave  him  for  the  present,  has  won  for 
him  in  English  history. 

In  writing  this  sketch,  we  lay  our  account  with 
some  censure,  which  we  have  no  choice  but  to  con- 
front. The  public  career  of  Lord  Beaconsfield  is  in 
our  view  the  opprobrium  of  English  politics  during 
the  past  forty  years,  and  his  political  character  is,  in 
the  situation  which  he  holds,  a  danger  and  defiance 
to  England,  and  a  threat  to  the  peace  of  the  world. 
There  can  be  no  reason  why,  without  exaggeration, 
but  without  reserve,  we  should  not  say  what  we 
believe  to  be  the  truth  about  it.  In  discussing  the 
actions  of  a  politician  from  day  to  day  it  is  neither 
desirable  nor  possible  to  be  always  examining  charac- 
ter. Life  is  too  short  for  business  of  that  sort. 
The  man  must  be  taken  for  granted,  in  the  position 
to  which  he  has  raised  himself,  and  in  which  the  pub- 
lic sees  him  with  acquiescence,  and  even  maintains 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  83 

him  with  deliberate  purpose.  But  this  abeyance,  for 
convenience'  sake,  of  the  moral  judgment — this  refu- 
sal to  raise  the  previous  question  of  general  char- 
acter and  motives  at  every  step  in  social  inter- 
course or  every  stage  of  the  public  business — cer- 
tainly does  not  involve  the  permanent  renunciation 
of  moral  judgment.  It  is  impossible  to  leave  men  to 
the  appreciation  of  history  only.  To  treat  Lord  Bea- 
consfield  as  if  he  were  a  Chatham,  would  simply  be 
ludicrous  twenty-five  years  hence.  No  one  will 
grudge  any  paradox-monger  of  the  twentieth  century 
an  amusement  of  that  sort,  if  he  can  find  nothing 
better  or  more  plausible.  But  what  will  be  historic 
folly  then  is  a  very  present  danger  now.  a  danger 
against  which  it  is  impossible  without  what  is  called 
attacking  an  individual.  We  speak  only  of  Lord 
Beaconsfield's  public  character.  His  admirers  have 
not  even  the  least  right  to  protest  against  personality 
in  politics.  The  life  of  the  hero  has  been  little  more 
than  a  series  of  personal  assaults. 

This  example,  however,  is  the  last  by  which  we 
should  desire  to  justify  ourselves,  and  we  have  no  in- 
tention of  imitating  it.  The  motive  which  has  urged 
us  to  the  task  of  studying  his  political  career  is  of  a 


84  POLITICAL  ADVENTURES   OF 

different  order.  At  present  the  doctrine  of  the  per- 
sonal power  is  loudly  proclaimed.  An  attempt  is 
being  made  to  revive  the  pretensions  which  George 
III.  strove  unsuccessfully  to  assert.  This  effort  has 
always  been  tried  under  foreign  inspiration.  An 
able  German,  Baron  Stockmar,  .undertook  to  instruct 
the  Prince  Consort  in  the  theory  and  practice  of  the 
British  Constitution,  and  the  ideas  of  the  Prince  Con- 
sort were,  of  course,  transmitted  to  the  Queen,  and 
shaped  her  practice.  English  statesmen,  by  a  care- 
less compliance,  due  in  part  to  the  deference  which 
they  found  it  difficult  to  withhold  from  one  whom,  to 
use  a  phrase  of  Lord  Palmerston's,  both  as  a  sover- 
eign and  a  lady  it  was  unbecoming  to  thwart,  too 
hastily  yielded  assent  to  doubtful  pretensions.  They 
even  framed  a  theory  of  the  Constitution  to  suit  these 
ideas.  Lord  John  Russell  consented,  on  a  celebrated 
occasion,  to  become  the  mouthpiece  of  Stockmarism 
in  the  House  of  Commons.  The  speech  which  he 
delivered  when  the  action  of  the  Prince  Consort  was 
called  in  question,  has  become  historic.  It  is  habit- 
ually cited  by  apologists  who  desire  to  aggrandize 
the  power  and  functions  of  the  Crown.  Like  almost 
all  attempts  to  frame  a  theory  of  the  Constitution,  it 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  85 

sought  the  living  among  the  dead.  By  the  time  that 
a  scheme  of  the  English  Constitution  is  concocted,  it 
has  almost  of  necessity  ceased  to  be  true.  Depending, 
as  the  Constitution  does,  upon  a  balance  of  powers  and 
forces  which  are  in  a  constant  state  of  relative  growth 
ixfid  decline,  the  theory,  even  if  it  be  brought  up  to 
the  very  latest  date  at  the  time  when  it  is  framed,  is 
pretty  sure  to  be  out  of  date  at  the  time  when  it  is 
published.  The  position  of  things  has  changed. 
Baron  Stockmar  and  the  Prince  Consort,  drawing 
their  doctrine  out  of  old  English  books  and  historic 
precedents,  illustrated  by  foreign,  and  chiefly  Ger- 
man, analogies,  adopted  a  procedure  more  certain 
perhaps  than  any  other  that  could  be  devised,  to  lead 
them  astray.  Even  if  they  possessed,  as  they  cer- 
tainly  did  not,  the  flexibility  of  mind  and  quickness 
of  intuitive  perception  needful  to  discern  the  genius 
of  a  people  and  the  character  of  institutions  foreign 
to  their  personal  experience,  the  method  which  they 
employed,  and  the  conditions  which  surrounded  them 
as  observers,  were  almost  of  a  necessity  fatal  to  suc- 
cess. A  court,  even  a  court  so  pure  as  that  of  Eng- 
land, is  the  very  last  place  in  which  parliamentary 
government  can  be  fairly  studied.  A  Prince  Consort, 


86  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

even  a  Prince  Consort  so  admirable  in  intention,  so 
respectable  in  character,  so  conscientious  and  pains- 
taking in  every  relation  of  life  as  Prince  Albert  was, 
is  the  very  last  person  to  comprehend  the  working  of 
Parliamentary  institutions  so  developed  as  those  of 
England.  It  is  too  rough  to  be  congenial  to  a  situa- 
tion so  delicate,  difficult,  and  even  equivocal  as  that 
of  the  husband  of  a  reigning  queen,  and  the  father  of 
an  heir-apparent  to  the  throne.  The  assistance  of  a 
kind  of  private  physician-minister,  such  as  Baron 
Stockmar  was,  would  make  matters  rather  worse  than 
better.  The  disposition  to  minimize  parliamentary 
authority,  and  to  assert  an  influence  of  the  court  and 
of  the  Crown  above  and  beyond  them,  is  in  such  cir- 
cumstances inevitable. 

The  premature  death  of  the  Prince  Consort,  the 
withdrawal  of  the  Queen  for  a  long  term  of  years  from 
active  interest  in  political  affairs,  and  the  long  Pre- 
mierships  of  Lord  Palmerston  and  Mr.  Gladstone, 
men  very  dissimilar  in  most  respects,  but  neither  of 
them  courtiers,  nor  possessing  the  qualities  likely  to 
make  them  the  favourites  of  court  favourites — men  of 
great  natural  vigour  of  character,  of  strong  purpose, 
and  of  resolute  political  convictions — all  these  things 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD.  87 

have  contributed  to  keep  in  check  for  a  time  the 
assumptions  which  Baron  Stockmar  encouraged. 
Under  Lord  Beaconsfield's  administration  they  have 
revived,  and  revived  in  a  more  mischievous  form  and 
under  worse  guidance  than  ever  before.  They  are 
ostentatiously  set  forth  in  courtier-like  Memoirs  ap- 
pearing under  the  royal  sanction,  and  in  political 
manifestos  of  important  Conservative  organs.  They 
fit  in  with  the  doctrines  which  Lord  Beaconsfield  has 
professed  with  more  steadiness  than  any  other  of  his 
fluctuating  opinions,  and  which  he  probably  seriously 
entertains.  They  are  likely  enough  to  receive  very 
mischievous  development  at  his  hands — a  develop- 
ment in  which  there  may  be  the  seeds  of  future 
troubles,  unless  a  more  modest  view  of  the  functions 
of  the  Crown  in  the  Constitution  than  that  which  he 
encourages,  be  adopted  and  acted  upon  in  future. 
The  personal  power  of  the  monarch  is  in  danger  of 
becoming  either  a  means  of  thwarting  a  minister  who 
has  the  confidence  of  the  country  without  the  good- 
will of  the  sovereign  ;  or,  what  might  be  yet  more 
calamitous,  the  personal  power  of  an  adroit  flatterer 
and  a  daring  adventurer  is  likely,  under  forms  of  ob- 
seq.iious  submission,  to  take  the  place  of  the  persona/ 


88  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

power  of  the  monarch.  Cardinal  Wolsey  wrote,  Ego 
et  rex  meus.  Lord  Beaconsfield  makes  a  very  near 
approach  sometimes  to  a  similar  egotism.  It  is  no 
longer  possible  to  treat  him  with  the  half-contemp- 
tuous indulgence  that  was  thought  to  be  due  to  a 
political  comedian.  Up  till  1874  Mr.  Disraeli  was 
treated  by  the  whole  political  press  of  England  as  a 
joke,  although  he  was  often  treated — and  especially 
in  the  Quarterly  Review — as  a  very  misplaced  and 
untimely  joke.  In  1878,  without  being  a  serious  per- 
sonage, he  holds  very  serious  issues  in  his  hands.  It 
is  essential  that  men  should  be  reminded  what  man- 
ner of  man  he  is,  to  whom  the  English  people,  the 
English  Parliament,  and  the  Queen  of  England,  ha\e 
committed  a  sort  of  political  dictatorship. 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  89 

III. 

FROM  1837  TO  1852. 

LORD  BEACONSFIELD'S  political  adventures  have 
three  stages.  The  first,  extending  from  1826  to 
1837,  exhibits  his  beginnings  in  literature  and  poli- 
tics, and  shows  how  he  struggled  with  reluctant  con- 
stituencies until  at  last  he  forced  his  way  into  the 
House  of  Commons.  It  is  really  the  most  important 
of  all,  for  in  it  the  man  was  formed  and  displayed, 
and  the  peculiarities  of  his  character  and  genius  were 
disclosed  with  less  restraint  than  afterwards.  He 
gambolled  with  unchecked  license.  The  fierce  play 
of  an  untamed  nature  gave  itself  free  vent.  After- 
wards, Lord  Beaconsfield  found  it  necessary  to  clothe 
himself  in  parliamentary,  official,  and  social  decorum. 
Only  now  and  then  in  the  wild  sallies,  and  still  often- 
er  in  the  demure  smile,  do  we  see  that  the  man  is  in 
disguise.  Still,  every  now  and  then  the  aboriginal 
savage  looks  through  his  eyes,  and  occasionally 
shrieks  in  his  voice,  and  displays  itself  in  his  excited 


90  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

gestures.  The  impish  "  nature  breaks  at  seasons 
through  the  gilded  pale."  The  next  period  is  com- 
pressed within  the  years  from  1837  to  1852.  It  re- 
cords Lord  Beaconsfield's  struggles  in  the  House  of 
Commons  to  parliamentary  toleration,  to  parliament- 
ary recognition,  to  parliamentary  eminence,  through 
the  spokesmanship  first  of  a  rather  ridiculous  coterie, 
then  of  an  angry  faction,  and  afterwards  of  an  organ- 
ized party,  raising  him  into  office,  and  the  ministerial 
leadership  in  the  House  of  Commons.  Lord  Bea- 
consfield  began  by  wearing  the  livery  of  Peel ;  he 
then,  with  ribbons  in  his  hat  and  tabor  in  his  mouth, 
masqueraded  as  a  rural  swain,  dancing  with  his 
young  England  companions  round  a  Maypole ;  and 
finally  in  the  breeches  and  top-boots  of  a  stage 
squire,  smacked  his  hunting  whip  against  his  thigh, 
denounced  the  villainy  of  the  traitor  Peel,  who  had 
deceived  him  and  other  simple-minded  country  gen- 
tlemen into  a  belief  that  he  was  a  Protectionist,  and  a 
friend  of  the  land  and  of  the  corn  laws,  while  he  was 
nothing  but  a  manufacturer  and  free-trader.  Lord 
Beaconsfield's  rapid  changes  of  costume  and  charac- 
ter resemble  those  of  the  elder  and  younger  Mathews 
in  some  of  their  startling  transformations.  The  third 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  9! 

period  of  his  political  adventures,  in  which  England 
now  has  the  perilous  honour  and  excitement  of  living, 
is  that  of  his  official  and  ex-official  life.  It  extends 
from  the  year  1852  to  this  present  month  of  June, 
1878,  and  probably  will  extend  considerably  beyond 
it.  It  is  really  that  which  most  interests  the  world ; 
but  the  second  period,  which  engages  us  now,  must 
first  be  rapidly  surveyed. 

The  year  1837  then  saw  Mr.  Disraeli  fairly  launch- 
ed in  the  career  in  which  for  more  than  forty  years  he 
has  played  a  conspicuous,  and  for  thirty  of  those 
forty,  a  distinguished,  and  on  some  questions,  a  deci- 
sive part.  The  law,  since  altered,  required  that  a  new 
parliament  shall  be  summoned  on  the  accession  of  a 
new  sovereign  ;  and  he  was  a  member  of  the  first 
House  of  Commons  that  met  under  the  reign  of 
Queen  Victoria.  He  had  been  elected  for  Maid- 
stone.  He  won  this  victory  not  over  hir  old  enemies 
the  Whigs,  but  over  his  former  friends  and  allies,  the 
Radicals,  defeating  the  veteran  Colonel  Perronet 
Thompson.  This  Barrabean  preference  on  the  part 
of  the  Kentish  borough  has  since  been  atoned  for  by 
wiser  elections  to  subsequent  parliaments.  Such  tri- 
umphs of  the  sciolist  and  the  adventurer  over  the 


92  POLITICAL  ADVENTURES   OF 

man  of  pure  and  public  purpose,  of  fixed  principles, 
and  of  reasoned  convictions,  are,  however,  incidents 
of  public  life  too  common  and  natural  to  attract 
much  attention.  It  has  been  Lord  Beaconsfield's 
purpose  in  life  to  advance  himself,  and  he  has  sue* 
ceeded.  It  was  the  purpose  of  Colonel  Perronet 
Thompson  to  advance  the  doctrines  which  he  be- 
lieved to  be  true,  and  to  promote  the  reforms  which 
he  deemed  to  be  necessary.  Both  have  had  the  tri- 
umph which  they  most  coveted.  Each  illustrates  the 
value  of  singleness  of  purpose,  be  the  purpose  good 
or  evil,  in  public  or  in  private  life.  It  is  natural  to 
desire  that  a  man  who  promotes  a  great  cause  shall 
also  promote  himself.  But  the  conditions  of  human 
life  and  character  do  not  often  allow  of  this  double 
victory ;  and  the  man  who  has  this  twofold  aim  in 
view  is  not  likely  to  realize  either  part  of  it.  Usual- 
ly he  must  either  sacrifice  himself  to  his  cause,  or  his 
cause  to  himself.  To  desire  to  be  disinterested  and 
rewarded  is  a  state  of  mind  logically  contradictory, 
but  in  practice  too  easily  and  too  frequently  realized. 
To  strive  only  for  principles,  and  to  reap  place  and 
power,  titles  and  decorations,  public  honour  and 
popular  gratitude,  is  a  combination  very  flattering 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  93 

to  that  inward  eye  which  is  the  bliss  of  meditative 
and  ambitious  solitude.  The  internal  delight  of  satis- 
fied virtue,  and  the  gratified  vanity  of  external  hon- 
ours, are  scarcely  to  be  had  together  except  in  the  fan- 
ciful forecast  of  a  sentimental  virtue  veiling  personal 
greed.  The  man  who  has  no  cause  but  himself, 
and  the  man  who,  if  we  may  say  so,  has  no  self  but 
his  cause,  are  alone  likely  to  reach  the  goal  that  they 
set  before  them.  The  men  who  are  a  little  for  virtue 
and  a. great  deal  for  themselves  will  probably  end  by 
being  all  for  themselves,  and  so  sink  into  the  first 
class.  The  men  who  are  too  virtuous  to  be  unscru- 
pulous, but  not  virtuous  enough  to  lose  sight  of  them- 
selves, will  probably  share  the  misfortune  of  the  dog 
that  courses  two  hares  at  once.  Lord  Beaconsfield 
has  had  one  steady  and  consistent  purpose  through 
life ;  and,  to  use  Burke's  expression,  he  has  varied 
his  means  in  order  to  preserve  the  essential  unity  of 
his  end.  To  climb  ever  higher  and  higher,  to  fix 
more  and  more  steadily  the  public  gaze,  to  wield 
power,  to  receive  and  distribute  honours,  to  be  the 
talk  of  his  coterie,  of  England,  of  Europe,  of  the 
world,  has  been  his  aim,  and  in  this  he  has  succeeded. 
No  career  ever  illustrated  more  remarkably  the  vir- 


94  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

tues,  if  they  be  such  apart  from  the  ends  to  which 
they  are  directed,  of  steady  and  unshaken  purpose,  of 
perseverance,  patience,  and  audacity,  of  the  skill 
which  knows  when  to  wait  and  when  to  act.  Lord 
Beaconsfield  is  the  great  modern  professor  and  prac- 
titioner in  its  personal  application  of  that  doctrine  of 
opportunism,  which  Peel,  in  its  more  legitimate  po- 
litical aspects,  made  a  system  in  England,  and  to 
which  the  tactics  of  M.  Gambetta  have  given  a  name 
in  France.  The  debauching  effect  of  the  French 
Empire,  even  upon  such  opponents  as  the  Repub- 
lican leader  of  France,  is  to  be  seen  in  his  undis- 
guised admiration  for  Lord  Beaconsfield. 

Lord  Beaconsfield,  who  had  been  alternately  a 
Tory-Radical,  and  a  Radical-Tory,  as  convenience 
might  dictate,  appeared  at  Maidstone  as  a  simple 
Conservative.  For  the  next  six  or  seven  years  of 
his  life  he  can  best  be  described  by  a  term  which  had 
not  then  taken  its  place  in  political  nomenclature. 
He  was  a  Peelite,  though  not  of  course  in  the  later 
meaning  of  the  word,  in  which  it  denoted  a  school  of 
political  doctrine  and  practice.  He  was  a  Peelite  in 
a  more  personal  sense,  such  as  that  in  which  the 
"gallant,  gay  domestics"  of  High  Life  below  Stairs 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD.  95 

assume  the  names,  as  they  wear  the  livery,  of  the 
noblemen  and  gentlemen  on  whom  they  condescend 
to  wait.  His  insight  into  personal  character  enabled 
him  to  single  out  the  really  capable  man  of  his  age. 
His  perception  of  political  tendencies  led  him  to 
recognise  that  the  hour  was  bringing  his  opportunity 
to  the  man ;  and  he  flung  himself  into  the  current 
which  was  carrying  place  and  power,  and  meaner 
things  and  persons  with  it,  to  the  feet  of  Peel.  The 
impatience  and  alarmed  prejudices  of  William  IV. 
had  anticipated  matters.  But  the  extraordinary  skill 
and  address  with  which  Sir  Robert  Peel,  in  1834 — 5, 
had  maintained  himself  as  the  Minister  of  a  minority, 
imposed  by  the  royal  pleasure  upon  a  hostile  Parlia- 
ment and  country,  only  showed  that  the  approaching 
time  had  not  yet  arrived.  It  illustrated  all  the  more 
signally  the  unrivalled  ascendancy  of  the  man. 
Curiously  enough,  it  has  fallen  to  Lord  Beaconsfield 
to  display  more  than  once  a  somewhat  similar  power 
as  the  leader  of  a  Government  in  a  minority,  before 
showing  what  he  could  do  as  a  Prime  Minister  with 
an  undisputed  majority  behind  him.  In  1836  Lord 
Beaconsfield  had  addressed  one  of  the  letters  of 
Runnymede  to  Sir  Robert  Peel.  It  is  characteristic 


96  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

of  the  upholsterer  and  ornamental  gardener  in  the 
present  Prime  Minister,  that  his  expressions  of  almost 
adoring  confidence  in  the  man  are  mingled  with  ex- 
pressions of  admiration  of  the  big  house  and  well-laid 
out  grounds  in  which  Sir  Robert  Peel  spent  his  re- 
tirement. Lord  Beaconsfield  does  not  hate  Persian 
displays  or  love  a  Sabine  farm.  A  great  man  not 
clothed  in  purple  and  fine  linen,  nor  faring  sump- 
tuously every  day,  a  great  man  moderately  housed 
and  attended,  is  to  him  scarcely  a  great  man  at  all. 
"  The  halls  and  bowers  of  Dray  ton ;  those  gardens 
and  that  library  where  you  have  realised  the  romance 
of  Verulam  and  where  you  enjoy  the  lettered  ease 
that  Temple  loved,"  rouse  the  ingenuous  enthusiast 
to  a  rapturous  eloquence  which  shows  that  George 
Robins  need  not  have  lacked  a  successor  if  Lord 
Beaconsfield  had  had  anything  but  himself  to  put  up 
to  auction.  These  things  are  as  essential  to  his 
image  of  Sir  Robert  Peel  as  the  panoply  of  "your 
splendid  talents  and  your  spotless  character."  Sir 
Robert  Peel  was  declared  to  be  "  like  the  Knight  of 
Rhodes"  in  Schiller's  heroic  ballad,  "  the  only  hope 
of  a  suffering  isle."  The  letter  is  a  lyrical  invocation, 
a  sort  of  prose-parody  on  the  ode  in  which  Horace 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  Q7 

compared  Augustus  to  Jupiter,  to  the  equal  discredit 
of  the  god,  the  emperor,  and  the  poet.  Lord  Bea- 
consfield  saw  that  the  opportunity  of  Peel  and  of  the 
Conservative  party  was  coming,  and  he  lost  no  time 
in  proclaiming  himself  on  the  side  of  the  winners. 

The  electioneering  addresses  at  Maidstone  were 
couched  in  the  same  vein  as  the  letters  of  Runny- 
mede.  That  personal  and  political  hatred  of  the 
Whigs,  which  is  one  of  the  few  things  in  which  he  has 
been  consistent,  is  freely  expressed.  Lord  Beacons- 
field  perceived  that  they  were  a  declining  and  perish- 
ing party,  though  they  still  had  a  name  to  live,  and 
persisted  in  existence  from  mere  continuance.  As  a 
tree,  whose  roots  are  decaying  in  the  earth,  still  for  a 
season  puts  forth  leaves  and  flowers,  and  sometimes 
bears  good  fruit,  so  the  Whigs  have  for  a  generation 
produced  useful  measures.  But  practically  their  work 
was  done  in  1832.  The  Reform  Bill,  which  was  their 
greatest  achievement,  destroyed  them  as  well  as  the 
abuses  at  which  it  was  aimed.  The  conditions  of  po- 
litical existence  were  wholly  changed ;  and  in  these 
altered  conditions  the  Whig  party  could  not  flourish. 
It  is  unjust  to  deny  the  genuineness  of  their  Liberal- 
ism and  the  value  of  their  services  to  Liberalism. 
7 


<)8  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

Under  the  political  conditions  of  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries,  the  contest  against  the  (^spotism 
of  the  later  Stuarts,  and  against  the  pretensions  of 
George  III.  to  magnify  the  prerogatives  and  personal 
power  of  the  Crown,  could  be  waged  with  success 
only  by  the  great  houses.  An  oligarchical  character 
was  therefore  almost  of  necessity  impressed  upon  the 
defence  of  the  principles  of  the  constitution.  The 
three  statesmen  whom,  after  Bolingbroke  and  Wynd- 
ham,  Lord  Beaconsfield  most  admires,  are  Chatham, 
Shelburne,  and  the  younger  Pitt.  He  eulogises  their 
Liberal  doctrines  with  respect  to  constitutional  lib- 
erty, to  freedom  of  trade,  and  Parliamentary  reform, 
as  genuine  Toryism.  But  they  derived  those  doc- 
trines from  Whig  traditions  in  the  first  case,  to  which 
in  the  two  latter  must  be  added  the  influence  of  Adam 
Smith's  writings,  and  of  personal  intercourse  with  the 
Nonconformists  Price  and  Priestley.  There  was  no- 
thing in  Toryism  to  make  Chatham  and  Shelburne  ad- 
vocates of  American  freedom,  nor  to  make  Shelburne 
and  the  younger  Pitt  defenders  of  free-trade.  The  men 
whom  Lord  Beaconsfield  calls  Tories  were  known  in 
their  own  time  more  correctly  as  Chatham  Whigs,  that 
is  to  say,  they  were  scarcely  Whigs  at  all.  They  tried, 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD.  99 

with  a  real  though  a  premature  and  inopportune  wis- 
dom, a  wisdom  therefore  rather  of  speculation  than  of 
practice,  to  be  Liberals  without  being  Whigs.  Chat- 
ham  was  strong  enough  in  virtue  of  his  wonderful 
ascendancy  of  personal  character,  and  of  his  transcen- 
dent success  in  foreign  policy  and  the  conduct  of  our 
European  wars,  to  hold  his  own  against  both  the 
Crown  and  the  great  families.  Shelburne,  theoreti- 
cally, and  to  some  extent  in  practice,  an  advanced 
Liberal  of  the  modern  type,  was  obliged  to  strengthen 
himself  by  the  support  of  the  Crown  against  Whig 
oligarchy,  and  as  theory  often  follows  practice,  he 
was  led  to  formulate  doctrines  of  a  patriot  king  ruling 
independently  of  parties,  which  brought  him  danger- 
ously near  to  the  insidious  Tory  democracy  of  Boling- 
broke.  The  domestic  factions  into  which  the  French 
Revolution  divided  English  parties  made  Pitt,  who 
never  was  a  Tory,  the  head  of  a  Tory  government 
and  the  agent  of  a  Tory  policy.  But  in  all  that  does 
these  men  most  honour,  in  all  that  makes  party  zeal- 
otry anxious  to  claim  the  sanction  of  their  names,  they 
were  only  not  Whigy,  because  they  were  something 
more  and  better  than  Whigs.  They  were  Liberals  of 
a  more  modern  type,  endeavouring  to  emancipate 


TOO  POLITICAL    ADVENTURES    OF 

themselves  too  soon  from  the  conditions  under  which 
alona  a  Liberal  policy  was  possible  in  the  eighteenth 
century.  They  were  thus  drawn  into  dangerous  alli- 
ances with  Tory  principle  of  personal  rule,  and  in  the 
case  of  Pitt  into  a  Tory  policy  both  in  home  and 
foreign  politics.  The  Whigs  were  an  oligarchical 
party,  because  the  great  families  opposed  the  only  or- 
ganization by  which  the  pretensions  of  the  Crown 
could  be  effectually  combated,  and  the  principles 
established  in  1689,  could  be  defended  against  the 
Court  and  against  Church-and-king-mobs. 

This  strange  combination  of  oligarchical  rule  and 
liberal  principle,  inevitable  and  useful  though  it  was, 
had  done  its  work  in  1832.  From  that  time  it  be- 
came an  anachronism  and  an  offence.  A  century  and 
a  half  of  struggle  under  these  conditions  has  inefface- 
ably  stamped  its  character  upon  the  Whig  aristocracy. 
A  Whig  is  a  Liberal  who  believes  that  Liberal  princi- 
ples can  be  only  asserted  under  the  guardianship  and 
by  the  representatives  of  certain  old  families.  He 
imports  the  historic  conditions  of  the  eighteenth 
century  into  the  nineteenth.  He  does  not  perceive 
that  the  Reform  Act  of  1832  in  part,  and  that  of 
1867  almost  completely,  abolished  him  ;  and  that 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  IOI 

modern  Liberalism,  whether  it  be  moderate  or  ad- 
vanced, exists  under  conditions  involving  his  trans- 
formation or  his  departure  from  the  political  scene. 
The  hot-house  protection  of  an  oligarchical  party, 
needful  to  the  delicate  plant  of  constitutional  free- 
dom, is  simply  a  hindrance  to  the  health  and  devel- 
opment of  the  vigorous  tree.  The  great  noble  in 
politics  must  share  the  fate  of  the  patron  in  litera- 
ture. The  Whigs  deserve  that  historic  honour  and 
political  gratitude  which  Lord  Beaconsfield  denies 
them.  But  the  doom  which  falls  on  those  who  have 
done  their  work,  though  it  may  have  been  a  noble 
one,  cannot  be  avoided.  If,  however,  the  aristocratic 
patronage  of  Liberal  principles  is  obsolete,  the  equal 
service  of  Liberals  of  every  class,  patrician  or  plebeian, 
to  the  common  cause  is  still  to  be  desired.  The 
principle  of  exclusion  directed  against  men  of  rank 
and  lineage  would  of  course  be  as  absurd  as  the  princi- 
ple of  exclusion  asserted  by  them.  There  is  little  dan- 
ger in  the  present  constitution  of  English  society  that 
any  such  proscription  will  be  attempted.  Name  and 
birth  and  wealth  will  always  have  something  more 
than  their  proper  advantage,  if  any  advantage  be 
proper  in  English  political  life.  If  anything  could  re- 


102  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

vive  Lord  Beaconsfield's  pet  aversion,  the  Venetian 
oligarchy,  it  would  be  the  re-establishment  of  that  per- 
sonal power  of  the  Crown  of  which  he  has  almost 
always  been  the  advocate  in  theory,  and  which  he 
seems  inclined  to  assert  in  practice.  But  the  pop- 
ular power  does  not  now  need  to  shelter  itself,  like 
the  towns  of  the  Middle  Ages,  in  the  shadow  of  some 
feudal  castle.  It  is  not  for  Lord  Beaconsfield  to 
bring  us  back  to  the  obsolete  struggles  of  the  time  of 
Anne  and  of  the  first  three  Georges.  England  is  no 
longer  merely  the  spectatress,  or  the  stake,  of  the 
game  for  ascendancy,  played  by  monarchy  and  aris- 
tocracy. 

The  principal  charge  which  Lord  Beaconsfield  has 
made  against  the  Whigs  is  their  indifference  to  the 
interests  and  feelings  of  the  poor.  The  Condition-of- 
England  question  did  not  occupy  them.  No  imputa- 
tion is  more  entirely  devoid  of  truth.  The  great 
characteristic  of  English  politics  since  the  passing  of 
the  Reform  Act  is  the  part  which  social  politics  have 
played  in  it.  Either  in  principle  or  in  actual  fact  the 
disputes  of  generations  had  been  settled  during  the 
years  which  immediately  preceded,  or  in  those  which 
closely  followed,  the  great  measTjL"e  of  1832.  Reli- 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  103 

gious  liberty,  involving  in  its  further  development 
religious  equality,  won  the  victory  which  was  sure 
to  carry  all  the  rest  with  it,  when  the  Tests  and 
Corporation  Acts  were  repealed,  and  Catholic  Eman- 
cipation was  achieved.  The  system  on  which  Ireland 
must  be  governed  was  decided  when  the  latter  meas- 
ure was  passed,  and  it  was  further  acknowledged  in 
the  unsectarian  character  of  the  National  System  of 
Education  established  in  Ireland.  The  unsuccessful 
Appropriation  Clause  contained  in  principle  Irish  re- 
establishment  ;  and  the  Civil  Mr arriages  Act  was  a 
further  extrusion  of  the  ecclesiastical  principle  by  the 
secular  in  human  affairs.  The  ascendancy  of  the 
democratic  principle  in  the  constitution,  though  yet 
waiting  its  accomplishment,  had  the  promise  of  its 
fulfilment  in  the  Reform  Act  of  1832.  The  Poor 
Relief  Act,  notwithstanding  its  imputed  harshness, 
proclaimed  to  the  poor  the  doctrine  of  energy  and 
self-reliance,  and  emancipated  them  from  a  degrading 
aiv!  servile  dependence  on  the  alms  of  the  rich. 
The  legislation  of  Huskisson  contained  within  it  the 
germs  of  that  passing  of  Free  Trade,  which  has  since 
been  more  completely  developed  than  any  other  ac- 
knowledged principle  in  our  legislation.  The  Munici- 


IO4  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

pal  Corporations  Act  established  local  self-govern- 
ment, though  it  did  not  apply  it  completely  and  uni- 
versally or  thoroughly.  The  final  severance,  at  the 
accession  of  the  Queen,  of  the  Crown  of  Hanover 
from  that  of  England,  was  the  pledge  of  a  disen- 
tanglement from  European  projects  and  alliances,  and 
symbolized  the  substitution  of  an  insular  for  a  con- 
tinental policy  in  foreign  affairs. 

The  Queen  succeeded  to  an  era  of  settled  ques- 
tions, of  questions  settled  that  is  in  principle,  though 
their  development  and  application  still  had  to  be 
contended  for.  Hence  the  calm  and  steady  progress 
which  has  been  the  characteristic  hitherto  of  her  forty 
years'  reign.  The  force  of  facts,  that  practical  logic 
which  may  be  disputed  but  cannot  be  long  disobeyed, 
made  Conservative  as  well  as  Liberal  governments, 
Peel  as  well  as  Melbourne  and  Russell,  the  heads 
and  instruments  of  that  progress.  The  Reform  Act, 
and  the  measures  of  civil,  religious,  and  commercial 
freedom  which  immediately  preceded  and  followed, 
called  a  new  England  into  existence  ;  and  the  first 
business  of  those  who  had  created  or  discovered  it 
was  to  survey  the  country,  and  trace  what  manner  of 
land  it  was  on  which  they  were  about  to  enter. 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  IOJ 

Hitherto  it  had  been  a  terra  incognita  to  those  who 
ruled  it.  Its  new  rulers  did  their  best  to  find  out 
what  it  was  like.  This  was  the  period  when,  accord- 
ing to  Sydney  Smith,  "  the  whole  earth  was  in  fact  in 
commission."  Sanitas  sanitatum,  omnia  sanitas  is  the 
phrase  in  which  Lord  Beaconsfield  a  few  years  ago 
summed  up  his  domestic  policy.  Systematic  inqui- 
ries into  the  prevalence  of  fever  in  the  metropolis  ; 
into  the  need  of  open  spaces  ;  into  the  practice  of 
interment  in  towns  ;  into  the  conditions  of  the  labour 
ing  classes,  first  in  England  and  Wales,  and  after- 
wards in  Scotland  ;  into  the  employment  of  women 
and  children  in  mines  ;  the  reduction  of  the  hours  of 
labour  in  factories  ;  grants  in  aid  of  education  ; — these 
are  but  some  of  the  proofs  that  the  health  of  the  peo- 
ple, physical  and  moral,  from  the  first  engaged  the 
attention  of  the  Liberal  governments  which  ruled 
England  during  the  opening  years  of  the  present 
reign.  That  they  did  not  do  more,  was  due  in  part, 
no  doubt,  to  their  own  hesitation  and  infirmity,  but 
in  a  greater  degree  still  to  the  resistance,  on  most  of 
these  questions,  which  they  met  from  the  party  to 
which  Lord  Beaconsfield  attached  himself.  Lord 
Beaconsfield' s  attempts  to  represent  England  asgov- 


106  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

erned  before  the  Reform  Act  by  an  oligarchy  indiffer- 
ent to  the  poor,  and  ruled  since  by  a  plutocracy  hostile 
to  them,  have  about  as  much  historic  truth  as  we 
look  for,  or  at  any  rate  find,  in  his  statements. 

The  Parliament  in  which  Lord  Beaconsfield  took 
his  seat  was  elected  under  the  Whig  Ministry  which 
the  failure  of  King  William  IV.'s  attempt  to  govern 
by  a  Conservative  minority  in  the  House  of  Commons 
had  restored  to  office  with  a  parliamentary  majority, 
won  at  the  general  election  of  1835.  Its  achieve- 
ments had  been  the  Municipal  Corporation  Act, 
the  Tithe  Commutation  Act,  the  General  Registra- 
tion Act,  the  reduction  of  the  stamp  duty  on  news- 
papers and  of  the  duty  on  paper,  the  Act  allow- 
ing counsel  to  prisoners,  and  a  partial  reform  of 
the  jail  system  of  the  country — measures  one  of 
them  of  the  first  magnitude,  and  others  important  as 
being  the  first  steps  taken  in  a  direction  in  which 
large  advances  have  been  made  since.  Its  great 
failure  was  to  give  effect  to  the  motion  for  the  appro- 
priation to  educational  purposes  of  the  surplus  rev- 
enues of  the  Irish  Church,  which  had  brought  the 
Whigs  back  to  office.  The  Ministry  itself  was  in 
1837  practically  what  it  had  been  in  1835. 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  loj 

The  letters  of  Runnymede  abound  in  compliments 
to  its  leading  members,  who  are  addressed  frankly  in 
the  second  person.  Lord  Melbourne  is  "  the  sleek- 
est swine  in  epicurean  sty."  "  Contemptible  as  you 
are,"  he  is  told — yet  so-and-so,  and  so,  which  we 
need  not  quote.  "  With  the  exception  of  an  annual 
oration  against  Parliamentary  Reform,  your  career  in 
the  House  of  Commons  was  never  remarkably  distin- 
guished." "  When  I  recall  to  my  bewildered  mem- 
ory the  perplexing  circumstance  that  William  Lamb 
is  Prime  Minister  of  England,  it  seems  to  me  that  I 
recollect  with  labour  the  crowning  incident  of  some 
grotesque  dream."  "  It  is  perhaps  hopeless  that 
your  lordship  should  rouse  yourself  from  the  embraces 
of  that  Siren  Deridia,  to  whose  fatal  influence  you 
are  not  less  a  slave  than  our  second  Charles."  Mr. 
Disraeli's  character  of  Lord  Melbourne  is  a  savage 
version  of  the  well-known  banter  of  Sydney  Smith. 
Lord  John  Russell  is  informed  :  "  Your  character  is 
a  curious  one  .  .  .  .  You  were  born  with  a  strong 
ambition  and  a  feeble  intellect."  He  is  flattered 
with  the  statements  that  "  your  intellect  produced  " 
in  succession  "the  feeblest  tragedy  in  our  language," 
"  the  feeblest  romance  in  our  literature,"  and  "  the 


I08  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

feeblest  political  essay  on  record."  "  Your  memoirs 
of  the  Affairs  of  Europe  .  .  .  retailed  in  frigid  sen- 
tences, a  feeble  compilation  from  the  gossip  of  those 
pocket  tomes  of  small  talk,  which  abound  in  French 
literature  .  .  .  This  luckless  production  closed  your 
literary  career ;  you  flung  down  your  futile  pen  in  in- 
capable despair ;  and  your  feeble  intellect  having 
failed  in  literature,  your  strong  ambition  took  refuge 
in  politics."  As  an  orator,  "  cold,  inanimate,  with  a 
weak  voice,  and  a  mincing  manner,  the  failure  of 
your  intellect  was  complete."  Under  this  double 
disappointment,  "  you  subsided  for  some  years  into  a 
state  of  listless  moroseness,  which  was  even  pitiable." 
"  This  was  the  period  when,  among  your  intimates, 
you  talked  of  retiring  from  that  public  life  in  which 
you  had  not  succeeded  in  making  yourself  public, 
when  you  traced,  like  a  feeble  Catiline,  the  avenues 
of  Holland  House."  "  Your  friends  always  treated 
you  with  a  species  of  contempt."  "  A  miniature  Mo- 
kanna,  you  are  now  exhaling  upon  the  constitution  of 

your   country all  '  that   long-hoarded  venom 

and  all  those  distempered  humours  that  have  for 
years  accumulated  in  your  petty  heart,  and  tainted 
the  current  of  your  mortified  life."  Lord  John  Rus- 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  109 

sell  is  told  that  he  is  "  an  infinitely  small  scarabaeus." 
When  the  foreigner  learns  "  that  you  are  the  leader 
of  the  House  of  Commons,  our  traveller  may  begin 
to.  comprehend  how  the  Egyptians  worshipped  AN 
INSECT." 

Later  in  Mr.  Disraeli's  career,  it  became  his  cue 
to  flatter  Lord  Russell  as  resolutely  as  in  the  letters 
of  Runnymede  he  had  bespattered  him.  In  Coningsby, 
his  "  strong  ambition "  and  "  dark  and  dishonour- 
able intrigues  "  are  converted  into  "this  moral  intre- 
pidity which  prompts  him  ever  to  dare  that  which  his 
intellect  assures  him  is  politic.  He  is  consequently 
at  the  same  time  sagacious  and  bold  in  council ;  as 
an  administrator,  he  is  prompt  and  indefatigable." 
The  "  cold  and  inanimate"  temperament,  the  "  weak 
voice  and  mincing  manner,"  "  the  imbecile  accents 
that  struggle  for  sound  in  the  chamber  echoing  but  a 
few  years  back  with  the  glowing  periods  of  Canning," 
become  "  physical  deficiencies  which  even  a  Demos- 
thenic impulse  could  scarcely  overcome."  But  these 
disadvantages  detract  little  from  the  parliamentary  in- 
fluence of  a  statesman  who  "  is  experienced  in  debate, 
quick  in  reply,  fertile  in  resources,  takes  large  views, 
and  frequently  compensates  for  a  dry  and  hesitat- 


IIO  POLITICAL  ADVENTURES    OF 

ing  manner  by  the  expression  of  those  noble  truths 
that  flash  across  the  fancy,  and  rise  spontaneously  to 
the  lips  of  men  of  poetic  temperament  when  address- 
ing popular  assemblies."  "  The  noble  "  of  the  Runny- 
inede  letters,  "  who  with  a  historic  name  and  no 
fortune,  a  vast  ambition  and  a  baulked  career,  and 
soured,  not  to  say  malignant,  from  disappointment," 
offered  "  prime  materials  for  the  leader  of  a  revolu- 
tionary faction,"  becomes  one  whose  "private  life  of 
dignified  repute,"  and  "  the  antecedents  of  whose  birth 
and  rank,"  added  to  the  personal  qualities  before 
eulogised,  make  the  best  leader  the  Whigs  have  ever 
had  or  could  have."  The  "  individual "  of  Runny- 
mede,  "who,  on  the  principle  that  good  vinegar  is 
the  corruption  of  bad  wine,  has  been  metamorphosed 
from  an  incapable  author  into  an  eminent  politician," 
becomes  in  the  biograprr  of  Lord  George  Bentinck 
an  instance,  along  with  Mr.  Burke,  "  Caius  Julius," 
and  Frederick  the  Great,  of  the  union  of  pre-eminent 
capacity,  both  in  meditation  and  in  action.  It  is 
pretty  certain  that  Lord  Beaconsfield  never  thought 
as  ill  or  as  highly  of  Lord  John  Russell  as  he  has  at 
different  times  pretended  to  do.  The  two  characters 
which  he  has  drawn  of  this  eminent  statesman  throw 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  Ill 

light  upon  his  treatment  of  Sir  Robert  P-eel,  for 
whom  a  different  fate  was  reserved,  to  be  first  the 
victim  of  Lord  Beaconsfield's  praise,  and  then  the 
object  of  his  slander — "  tooth  that  poisons  as  it 
bites." 

We  need  not  quote  further  flowers  of  speech  from 
the  garlands  of  compliments  with  which  Lord  Bea- 
con sfield  crowned  the  smaller  members  of  the  Whig 
cabinet  which  he  found  in  power  when  he  entered 
Parliament  in  1837.  But  it  may  be  interesting  to 
recall  some  of  the  compliments  which  he  addressed 
to  Lord  Palmerston.  Lord  Palmerston  is  described 
as  a  minister  who  has  maintained  himself  in  power 
"in  spite  of  the  contempt  of  a  whole  nation."  "Our 
language  commands  no  expression  of  scorn  which  has 
not  been  exhausted  in  the  celebration  of  your  char- 
acter, there  is  no  conceivable  idea  of  degradation 
which  has  not  been  at  some  period  or  another  asso- 
ciated with  your  career."  He  is  congratulated  on 
"  that  dexterity  which  has  never  deserted  you,  and 
which  seems  a  happy  compound  of  the  smartness  of 
an  attorney's  clerk  and  the  intrigue  of  a  Greek  of 
the  lower  empire."  Lord  Palmerston's  parliamentary 
shortcomings  are  attributed  rather  to  "  a  want  of 


112  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

breeding  than  to  a  deficiency  of  self-esteem.  The 
leader  of  the  Whig  Opposition  was  wont  to  say  .  .  . 
that  your  lordship  reminded  him  of  a  favourite  foot- 
man on  easy  terms  with  his  mistress."  The  qualities 
exhibited  in  these  elegant  extracts  are  those  which 
Lord  Beacon sfield  offered  for  sale,  as  he  stood  idle 
in  the  political  market-place,  because  as  yet  no  man 
had  hired  him.  These  gifts  of  political  scurrility  he 
brought  with  him  into  the  House  of  Commons.  He 
had  shown  them  before  in  his  encounters  with 
O'Connell,  and  he  was  afterwards  to  display  them  in 
his  tirades  against  Sir  Robert  Peel,  at  this  period  the 
subject  of  his  unbounded  eulogy. 

The  beginning  of  Lord  Beaconsfield's  parliament- 
ary career  did  not  give  much  promise  of  the  dis- 
tinction he  has  since  obtained.  We  need  not  tell 
the  old  story  of  the  failure  of  his  first  speech,  and  of 
the  verified  prediction  of  subsequent  success  which 
it  contained.  That  was  rather  a  cry  of  anguish,  the 
breathing  of  "  a  hope  which  was  too  like  despair  for 
patience  to  smother,"  than  an  expression  of  reason- 
able and  manly  self-confidence,  which  in  such  cir- 
cumstances would  have  waited  for  the  event,  rather 
than  have  vaunted  itself  in  prospective  braggadocio 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  113 

Lord  Beaconsfield  discovered  th£..t  he  was  a  stranger 
in  the  House  of  Commons  ;  and,  with  the  instinct  of 
an  intelligent  foreigner,  he  set  himself  to  learn  the 
language  and  to  acquire  the  usages  of  this  strange 
community  in  which  he  found  himself,  and  in  which 
he  was  determined  to  push  his  fortunes.  He  spoke 
with  moderate  success  on  some  of  the  principal 
topics  that  occupied  this  Parliament,  working  with 
the  regular  Opposition  headed  by  Sir  Robert  Peel, 
but  not  taking  a  prominent  part  in  it.  The  organized 
warfare  of  regular  parties  was  not  at  that  time  suited 
to  Mr.  Disraeli's  genius,  which  was  then  of  the 
guerilla  order.  He  went  with  what  has  since  been 
called  the  "  Front  Opposition  Bench,"  in  resisting 
Lord  John  Russell's  measures,  without  much  dis- 
crimination as  to  their  character.  He  spoke  against 
the  grants  in  aid  of  education,  and  against  the  Repeal 
of  the  Corn  Laws,  with  respect  to  which  and  to  Free- 
trade  generally  he  followed  the  changing  tactics  and 
adapted  himself  to  the  growing  Liberalism  of  Sir 
Robert  Peel. 

His  most  remarkable  avowal  was  his  declaration, 
which  had  some  boldness  and  generosity,  of  sympathy 

with  the   Chartists,  though   he   disapp/oved   of  the 
8 


114  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

Charter.  Lord  Beaconsfield  has  shown  from  time  to 
time  imaginative  sensitiveness  for  the  sufferings  of 
the  poor,  and  an  understanding  of  the  motives  which 
impelled  the  Chartist  agitation.  In  Sibyl  we  have 
the  expressions  of  this  sympathy,  as  in  Lothair  there 
is  certainly  an  intelligent  understanding,  which  seems 
to  betray  a  covert  liking  for  the  revolutionary  pro- 
jects and  leaders  of  the  continent.  A  very  little 
change  in  circumstances,  or  perhaps,  we  should  rather 
say,  a  slight  but  vital  modification  of  character,  might 
have  made  Lord  Beaconsfield  the  ally  of  Fergus 
O'Connor  and  the  partisan  of  Mazzini.  The  hand 
which  drew  Walter  Gerard  and  Stephen  Morley,  and 
Sybil  herself,  which  sketched  Mirandola  and  Captain 
Bruges  and  Theodora,  the  Marianne  and  the  National 
Convention  and  the  Fenian  Brotherhood,  is  not  that 
of  a  coarse  caricaturist  and  assailant.  There  is  a 
good  deal  of  true  insight  and  of  kindly  appreciation 
in  Lord  Beaconsfield's  sketches  of  men  and  organiza- 
tions, who  to  the  vulgar  and  scared  rich  are  objects 
at  once  of  terror  and  contempt.  But  the  thing  never 
goes  beyond  an  artistic  sentiment.  Chartists  and 
Mazzinists  are  to  him  picturesque  figares  in  a  drama. 
There  is  as  little  that  is  moral  in  his  feelings  towards 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  1 15 

them,  as  in  a  sensitiveness  to  music.  Lord  Beacons- 
field's  fatal  love  of  rank  and  wealth  and  power  has 
made  him  always  more  ready  to  use  the  prejudices  of 
their  possessors  for  his  own  political  advancement, 
than  to  combat  them  in  the  interests  of  persons  and 
classes  for  whose  sufferings  he  has  shown  in  his  nov- 
els and  in  his  speeches  a  literary  and  oratorical  ten- 
derness, and  whose  aims  he  has  understood  and 
considerately  interpreted.  Acts  of  personal  kindness 
are  attributed  to  him,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Chartist 
poet,  Thomas  Cooper,  and  we  are  glad  to  believe  in 
their  genuineness.  The  words  of  kindly  compassion 
which  Lord  Beaconsfield  gives  to  Mr.  Smith  O'Brien, 
in  his  life  of  Lord  George  Bentinck,  are  creditable  to 
him.  He  can  understand  motives  and  characters 
which  break  loose  from  routine,  even  into  hare- 
brained and  Quixotic  enterprises.  Lord  Beaconsfield 
could  write  a  description  of  Mazzini,  under  the  name 
of  Mirandola,  which  even  his  friends  might  accept ; 
but  he  vilified  Mazzini  in  his  own  name  and  character, 
and  pursued  him  in  the  persons  of  his  friends  in  the 
House  of  Commons.  He  could  make  heroes  of  the 
Chartist  leaders  and  respectable  enthusiasts  of  Fenian 
head-centres,  but  he  poured  contempt  on  the  obsolete 


Il6  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

advocates  of  stale  sedition  in  Parliament.  The  fine 
and  generous  qualities  which  are  not  absent  from 
Lord  Beaconsfield's  writings,  are  the  weightiest  con- 
demnation of  his  public  conduct.  So  far  as  practical 
politics  are  concerned,  Lord  Beaconsfield's  sympathy 
for  the  sufferings  of  the  poor,  and  his  intelligence  of 
their  aims,  even  when  most  vain  and  mischievous, 
does  little  more  than  furnish  a  basis  for  his  denuncia- 
tions of  Whig  indifference  to  these  things. 

The  Parliament  which  the  hostile  vote  of  1841 
brought  to  a  close,  left  Lord  Beaconsfield  in  a  politi- 
cal position  which  might  have  made  hopes  of  a  junior 
lordship,  or  even  an  under-secretaryship,  not  unrea- 
sonable in  the  almost  certain  event  of  the  general 
election  returning  a  Conservative  majority  to  the 
House  of  Commons.  On  the  dissolution  of  Parlia- 
ment, Lord  Beaconsfield  sought  the  suffrages,  not  of 
Maidstone,  but  of  Shrewsbury.  After  a  contest 
marked  by  the  coarsest  personalities,  of  which  this 
time  he  was  rather  the  object  than  the  author,  he  was 
returned  second  on  the  poll,  with  a  Conservative  col- 
league, the  Liberals  being  in  a  comparatively  small 
minority.  Sir  Robert  Peel  was  still 'the  object  of  his 
unmeasured  eulogy  and  of  his  unqualified  confidence. 


LORD    BEACONSFIEI.D.  117 

He  described  himself  as  "his  humble  but  fervent  sup- 
porter." He  used  something  like  the  language  of  a 
stage  confidant,  imparting  secrets  into  which  he  had 
been  admitted  for  the  sake  of  reassuring  the  electors 
of  Shrewsbury.  Sir  Robert  Peel  was  almost  too  great 
a  man  for  the  merely  finite  intelligence  of  Lord  Bea- 
consfield  completely  to  grasp.  He  represented  him- 
self as  baffled,  "  when  he  attempted  to  discover  how 
from  the  scattered  remnants  of  a  political  party  Sir 
Robert  Peel  had  collected  a  power  sufficient  to  direct 
the  fate  of  an  empire  .  .  .  and  in  an  age  of 
quick  transition  he  had  discovered  the  tone  and  spirit 
of  the  age."  The  contemplation  of  such  achieve- 
ments left  him  lost  in  admiration  for  Sir  Robert  Peel's 
"great  talents  and  matchless  foresight."  It  was  as  a 
supporter  of  Sir  Robert  Peel,  and  nothing  else,  that 
he  was  elected  for  Shrewsbury  in  1841,  and  he  pro- 
claimed the  satisfaction  which  he  had  had  in  "  writing 
to  Sir  Robert  Peel  to  inform  him  that  the  electors  of 
Shrewsbury  had  done  their  duty." 

In  August,  1841,  the  WhigSj  who  had  appealed  to 
the  country,  faced  on  the  ministerial  benches  a  Con- 
servative majority  in  the  House  of  Commons.  Prac- 
tically they  had  been  defeated  at  the  general  election 


Il8  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

upon  the  question  of  a  modification  of  commercial 
legislation  in  the  direction  of  freer  trade,  but  the 
amendment  to  the  Address  which  was  moved  by  the 
Opposition  did  not  directly  raise  that  issue.  In  that 
fact  was  an  indication,  which  Lord  Beaconsfield  at 
least  understood,  that  Sir  Robert  Peel  was  not  a  can- 
didate for  power  as  a  minister  pledged  to  Protection. 
Whoever  else  may  have  been  deceived,  he  was  not. 
In  the  speech  which  he  made  on  the  motion  of  want 
of  confidence,  Lord  Beaconsfield  took  pains  to  point 
out  that  Sir  Robert  Peel  was  not  pledged  to  Protec- 
tion, and  moreover  that  it  was  not  an  article  of  the 
Tory  creed.  The  election,  he  said,  did  not  turn  on 
the  question  of  the  import  duties  and  of  the  com- 
mercial reforms  proposed  by  the  Whigs,  but  on  their 
incapacity  for  affairs  and  their  inability  to  carry  out 
their  own  policy.  The  progress  of  commercial  re- 
form had  been  stopped  by  the  Reform  Act.  In  other 
words,  the  principles  of  Huskisson,  of  whom  Peel 
had  been  the  colleague,  and  was,  in  a  certain  sense, 
the  successor,  had  failed  to  receive  their  proper  de- 
velopment through  the  accession  of  the  Whigs  to 
power.  In  the  debate  on  Sir  Robert  Peel's  financial 
scheme  of  1842,  a  scheme  which  practically,  though 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  1 19 

timidly,  applied  the  doctrines  of  free-trade,  and 
which  was  introduced  by  the  Prime  Minister  in  a 
speech  which  stated  and  defended  them  theoretically, 
Lord  Beaconsfield  again  vindicated  both  the  measures 
and  the  doctrines  of  his  chief.  He  repeated  his 
statement  that  the  Tories  were  the  true  and  original 
free-traders.  Mr.  Pitt,  in  1787,  first  promulgated 
free-trade  principles,  which  were  opposed  by  Fox, 
Sheridan,  and  Burke,  which  Lord  Hawkesbury,  Mr. 
Robinson,  and  Mr.  Wallace  developed,  which  Mr. 
Huskisson  received  from  them,  and  which  Sir  Robert 
Peel  had  taken  up  from  him.  The  Tories  passed 
from  hand  to  hand  the  torch  of  sound  economic  doc- 
trine which  the  Whigs  strove  to  blow  out.  Sir  Rob- 
ert Peel  was,  in  this  respect,  by  legitimate  affiliation 
through  the  statesmen  just  named,  the  lineal  descend- 
ant and  true  representative  of  Mr.  Pitt.  Afterwards, 
when  the  opportunity  arose  of  heading  the  revolt 
against  Sir  Robert  Peel  on  pretexts  of  which  Lord 
Beaconsfield  himself  had  years  before  shown  the 
holiowness,  he  discovered  that  the  true  Free-Trader 
was  the  judicious  Protectionist ;  and  he  invented  a 
phrase  to  cover  this  ingenious  combination.  The 
phrase  was  "regulated  competition."  Mr.  Pitt,  Mr. 


I2O  POLITICAL  ADVENTURES   OF 

Wallace,  Mr.  Robinson,  Mr.  Huskisson,  and  the  rest, 
were  "  regulated  competitors."  Competition  is  regu- 
lated when  in  a  race  you  leave  one  runner  free  and 
tie  the  legs  of  the  others.  The  barren  question 
whether  free-trade  owes  most  to  Tories  or  to  Whigs 
is  only  part,  however,  of  a  larger  discussion,  of  which 
Lord  Beaconsfield  has  always  been  fond,  and  on 
which  we  have  already  spoken  at  some  length.  He 
has  from  time  to  time  contended  that  the  Tories  and 
not  the  Whigs  are  the  true  reformers.  His  case  con- 
sists in  a  reference  to  the  name  of  Mr.  Pitt,  who  was 
the  author  of  a  project  of  household  suffrage,  and  to 
those  of  Lord  Shelburne  and  even  Lord  Chatham. 
These  statesmen,  as  we  have  shown,  were  neither 
orthodox  Whigs,  still  less  genuine  Tories.  They 
were  in  their  characteristic  opinions,  Reformers,  who 
constituted  in  the  eighteenth  century  the  Liberal  doc- 
trine of  the  nineteenth  century. 

It  is  clear  from  what  has  preceded  that  Lord  Bea- 
consfield understood  perfectly  this  issue  which  was 
placed  before  the  country  in  the  general  election  of 
1841,  tne  principles  of  commercial  policy  on  which 
Sir  Robert  Peel's  Government  was  formed,  and  the 
character  of  its  first  measures  of  which  the  Repeal  of 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD.  121 

the  Corn  Laws  was  the  natural  and  inevitable  devel- 
opment. In  that  Government,  as  all  the  world 
knows,  he  was  not  included.  In  one  of  the  speeches 
which  he  made. — in  that  saturnalia  of  personal  vilifi- 
cation in  which  the  emancipated  slave  exceeded  the 
extremes!  license  of  his  order, — Sir  Robert  Peel  re- 
ferred to  the  fact  that  at  one  time  Mr.  Disraeli  had 
given  practical  signs  of  his  confidence  in  him  by  his 
expressed  willingness  to  take  office.  Overtures,  it  is 
believed,  were  made  which  were  not  prosecuted,  and 
the  discontinuance  of  which  was  not  perhaps  ex- 
plained with  sufficient  courtesy  to  the  expectant 
minister,  and  has  not  been  explained  to  the  public. 
When  the  memoirs  and  correspondence  of  Sir  Robert 
Peel  are  published,  a  disclosure,  it  is  believed,  will 
take  place  which  will  furnish  a  fresh  illustration  of, 
if  it  does  not  throw  new  light  on  the  characters,  of 
the  two  eminent  men  concerned.  It  is  curious  to  re- 
flect on  what  might  have  been  Mr.  Disraeli's  career, 
had  he  taken  the  subordinate  office  under  the  new 
Conservative  Government,  which  was  dangled  before 
his  longing  eyes  only  to  be  withdrawn  from  his  grasp. 
It  would  possibly  have  been  more  respectable — it  is 
not  likely  to  have  been  so  distinguished.  Mr.  Dis- 


122  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

raeli  was  scarcely  the  man  to  work  his  way  up  by 
parliamentary  docility  and  administrative  industry 
and  success,  through  an  ascending  scale  of  more  and 
more  important  parts,  to  a  high  place  in  the  Cabinet. 
He  is  a  man  of  surprises  and  seizures,  likely  either  to 
gain  everything  by  a  bound,  or  to  fall  back  bruised,- 
and  broken,  and  empty-handed.  It  might  have  been 
left  to  him,  if  Sir  Robert  Peel  had  been  kinder,  to 
illustrate,  after  the  manner  of  the  late  Mr.  Wilson 
Croker,  that  union  of  action  and  contemplation,  of 
literature  and  affairs,  of  which  Caius  Julius,  Fred- 
erick the  Great,  "both  eminently  literary  characters," 
Mr.  Burke,  and  Lord  John  Russell  were  signal  in- 
stances, and  to  have  furnished  another  Rigby  to  the 
mocking  pen  of  some  succeeding  satirist.  Fortune 
was  better  disposed  to  Mr.  Disraeli  than  she  seemed 
to  be,  and  the  under-secretary  manque  was  the  mate- 
rial out  of  which  the  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer 
and  Prime  Minister  and  the  successor  of  Sir  Robert 
Peel  in  the  leadership  of  the  Conservative  party  was 
framed. 

The  success  of  Sir  Robert  Peel's  second  adminis- 
tration was  a  disproof  of  the  sorrowful  foreboding 
with  which  the  Duke  of  Wellington  had  beheld  the 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD.  1 23 

accession  of  a  female  sovereign.  The  Duke  of  Wel- 
lington mournfully  contrasted  his  own  superficial 
graces  and  accomplishments  and  those  of  Sir  Robert 
Peel  with  the  fascinations  of  the  adorable  Melbourne. 
"  There  is  no  chance  of  a  Conservative  Government," 
he  is  reported  to  have  said;  "I  have  no  small  talk, 
and  Peel  has  no  manners."  Happily,  small  talk  and 
manners  are  not  the  conditions  of  office  under  a  par- 
liamentary system,  even  though  it  be  a  constitutional 
monarchy  with  a  female  sovereign  on  the  throne.  It 
is  creditable  to  the  Queen  that  no  minister  ever  won 
her  confidence  and  personal  friendship  so  completely 
as  Sir  Robert  Peel,  unless,  upon  evidence  happily  as 
yet  inconclusive,  we  are  to  make  an  exception  of 
Lord  Beaconsfield  himself.  Lord  Beaconsfield  is 
fond  of  dwelling  upon  Sir  Robert  Peel's  defects  of 
manner,  his  constraint  and  awkwardness,  and  his  in- 
capacity of  making  an  after-dinner  speech  without 
"  saying  something  stilted  and  even  a  little  ridicu- 
lous," though  he  parts  from  the  contemplation  of 
these  faults  in  a  great  parliamentary  statesman  with  a 
pious  valediction,  a  "  peace  be  to  his  ashes."  It  was 
one  of  Sir  Robert  Peel's  inconsistencies  that  the  man 
who  consented  to  take  office  at  the  personal  dictation 


124  POLITICAL  ADVENTURES   OF 

of  William  IV.,  under  conditions  as  unconstitutional 
as  those  which  have  made  the  i6th  of  May  a  memor- 
able date  in  French  history,  should  have  resisted  with 
spirit  and  firmness  the  ill-advised  attempt  of  the 
Queen,  or  rather  of  her  Whig  advisers,  to  force  the 
ladies  of  the  great  Whig  men  as  bedchamber  women 
upon  a  Conservative  Government.  It  is  not  astonish- 
ing to  find  Mr.  Disraeli  approving  Sir  Robert  Peel's 
conduct  in  1834,  for  he  approved  everything  Sir 
Robert  Peel  did ;  and,  moreover,  it  was  in  harmony 
with  the  lessons  he  himself  had  learned  and  taught  out 
of  Bolingbroke.  In  the  Runnymede  letters  he  praises 
Sir  Robert  Peel  for  having  accepted  the  premiership 
in  1834,  and  having  kept  it  until  1835,  in  spite  of  a 
hostile  parliamentary  majority.  "  You  retained  your 
post,"  he  adds,  "  until  you  found  you  were  endanger- 
ing the  King's  prerogative,  to  support  which  you  had 
alone  accepted  his  Majesty's  confidence."  In  his 
speech  upon  the  motion  of  want  of  confidence  in 
Lord  Melbourne's  Government,  in  1841,  he  de- 
nounced in  the  strongest  language  the  use  of  the 
sovereign's  name,  the  attempt  to  make  "the  majesty 
of  England  a  second  candidate  upon  some  paltry 
poll,"  and  the  presumed  intention  of  the  Whig  minis- 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD.  125 

try  to  defy  the  House  of  Commons,  and,  in  spite  of 
a  hostile  vote,  to  declare  that  the  Government,  in 
being  supported  by  the  Crown,  had  the  best  support 
a  minister  could  have.  This  is  sound  constitutional 
doctrine.  It  has  often  been  asserted  against  Lord 
Beaconsfield  himself,  notably  by  Mr.  Bright  in  1867. 
But  Lord  Beaconsfield  never  expresses  sound  consti- 
tutional principles,  except  when  the  Whigs  have  been 
betrayed  into  unsound  constitutional  practice,  or  are 
suspected  of  it. 

Mr.  Disraeli's  parliamentary  career  from  1841  to 
1846  follows  like  a  shadow  the  history  of  Sir  Robert 
Peel's  administration.  But  the  shade  is  at  last  seen 
to  be  thrown  by  a  sullen  cloud.  For  a  time  he  was 
the  umbra  of  the  prime  minister.  Soon  the  fervent 
blessings  of  the  mendicant  are  exchanged  for  doubtful 
and  angry  looks,  and  afterwards  for  threats  and  im- 
precations. Yet  Sir  Robert  Peel  simply  followed 
the  course  which  Mr.  Disraeli  had  approvingly  pre- 
dicted, and  which  he  had  described  as  the  triumph  of 
consummate  statesmanship.  In  a  very  early  speech 
he  lays  down  doctrines  of  political  casuistry,  which 
would  cover  acts  far  more  questionable  than  any 
which,  on  the  least  favourable  reading  of  his  motives 


126  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

and  conduct,  can  be  attributed  to  Sir  Robert  Peel, 
and  which  would  even  shelter  Lord  Beaconsfield's 
own  career  from  moral  censure.  "  A  statesman," 
he  said,  "is  the  creature  of  his  age,  the  child  of  cir- 
cumstances, the  creation  of  his  times.  A  statesman 
is  essentially  a  practical  character ;  and  when  he  is 
called  upon  to  take  office,  he  is  not  to  inquire  what 
his  opinions  might  or  might  not  have  been  upon  this 
or  upon  that  subject,  he  is  only  to  ascertain  the  need- 
ful, the  beneficial,  and  the  most  feasible  manner  in 
which  affairs  are  to  be  carried  on.  The  fact  is,  that 
the  conduct  and  opinions  of  public  men  must  not  be 
too  curiously  contrasted  in  a  free  and  aspiring  coun- 
try. The  people  have  their  passions,  and  it  is  even 
the  duty  of  public  men  occasionally  to  adopt  senti- 
ments with  which  they  do  not  sympathise 

I  laugh,  therefore,  at  the  objections  against  a  man 
that  at  a  former  period  of  his  career  he  advocated  a 
policy  different  to  his  present  one ;  all  I  seek  to  as- 
certain is  whether  his  present  policy  is  a  necessary 
expedient ;  whether  he  is  at  the  present  moment  pre- 
pared to  serve  his  country  according  to  its  present 
necessities." 

The  moral  principles  on  which  Lord  Beaconsfield 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD.  127 

was  prepared  to  censure  Sir  Robert  Peel  are  not 
clearly  deducible  from  this  passage,  which  he  might 
publish  as  the  text  of  a  political  Apologia  pro  vita 
sua.  But  the  contemplation  of  Sir  Robert  Peel's 
actual  career  in  the  House  of  Commons  from  Mr. 
Disraeli's  impartial  position  outside  the  administra- 
tion, recalled  this  somewhat  lax  moralist  to  a  severer 
political  virtue.  Growing,  but  not  yet  decided,  dis- 
approval is  indicated  in  the  tone  of  his  comments. 
The  perturbation  of  the  country  gentlemen  among 
whom  he  sat,  at  the  economic  tendencies  of  the  min- 
ister, communicated  themselves  to  Lord  Beaconsfield, 
on  whom  the  idea  soon  dawned  that  competition 
ought  to  be  more  and  more  "  regulated,"  in  its  appli- 
cation to  articles  which  country  gentlemen  were  con- 
cerned in  producing.  These  workings  of  an  uneasy 
mind  were  accompanied  by  the  stirrings  of  an  awak- 
ened conscience;  and  Lord  Beaconsfield  grew  more 
and  more  sensible  of  the  political  immorality  of  Sir 
Robert  Peel's  conduct.  Instead  of  having  inherited' 
free-trade  principles  by  legitimate  Conservative  deri- 
vation from  Pitt,  through  Lord  Hawkesbury,  Mr. 
Robinson,  Mr.  Wallace,  and  Mr.  Huskisson.  Sir 
Robert  Peel  was  found  to  have  purloined  them  from 


128  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

the  Whigs,  who  had  hitherto  figured  in  Mr.  Disraeli's 
speeches  as  the  great  antagonists  of  free-trade,  but 
•were  now  discovered  to  be  its  real  founders.  Sir 
Robert  Peel  was  charged  with  having  stolen  their 
clothes  while  they  were  bathing,  with  being  a  great 
middleman,  and,  politically,  a  vast  appropriation 
clause.  If  free-trade  was  to  be  established,  Lord 
Bcaconsfield,  honouring  genius,  would  prefer  to  re- 
ceive it  from  Mr.  Cobden,  rather  than  from  one  who, 
though  a  skilful  parliamentary  manoeuverer,  has  tam- 
pered with  the  generous  confidence  of  a  great  people 
and  a  great  party. 

The  country  gentlemen,  however,  though  preparing 
to  withdraw  their  confidence  from  Peel,  were  not 
ready  to  give  it  to  his  antagonist,  who  resolved,  there- 
fore, to  create  a  party  which  should  have  confidence 
in  him,  and  the  very  basis  of  whose  existence  should 
be  that  confidence.  Only  very  young  men,  and  those 
not  very  wise  ones,  could  satisfy  these  conditions, 
and  out  of  the  materials  which  they  presented  to  him 
Lord  Beaconsfield  formed  the  Young  England  party. 
Of  these,  the  only  survivors  are  Lord  John  Manners, 
who  is  comfortably  within  the  ministerial  fold,  and 
Mr.  Baillie  Cochrane,  who  wanders  disconsolately  on 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  129 

the  outside  of  it.  "  The  atrocious  crime  of  being  a 
young  man,"  to  which  a  great  parliamentary  orator 
had  at  one  time  indignantly  pleaded  guilty,  became 
an  exalted  merit,  a  sort  of  supernatural  and  sacra- 
mental grace  ;  and  to  be  told  by  Sir  Robert  Peel  to 
serve  on  railway  committees,  when  you  were  con- 
scious of  a  divine  summons  to  serve  your  country, 
was  little  less  than  a  profanity.  Only  those,  however, 
who  have  lost  their  youth  value  it  very  highly,  and  it 
was  natural  that  a  party  formed  on  this  basis  should 
be  formed  and  commanded  by  a  middle-aged  leader. 
"  We  youth,"  says  Falstaff  on  one  occasion ;  and 
Lord  Beaconsfield  parodied  him.  The  recently  pub- 
lished memoirs  of  Lord  Strangford  show  the  feelings 
with  which  this  new  intimacy  was  regarded  by  the 
respectable  peres  nobles,  to  whom  the  influence  which 
Mr.  Disraeli  had  gained  over  their  sons  was  a  sorrow- 
ful perplexity  over  which  they  shook  their  heads  and 
exchanged  condolences.  The  Duke  of  Rutland  de- 
plores to  one  correspondent  the  connection  of  Lord 
John  Manners  with  Lord  Beaconsfield,  much  as  the 
father  of  Lord  Frederick  Verisopht  might  have  la- 
mented his  son's  addiction  to  the  society  of  Sir  Mul- 
berry Hawk.  Young  England,  however,  was  merely 
9 


130  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

a  passing  fashion  or  craze,  memorable  rather  in 
literature  than  in  politics.  The  necessity  of  finding 
some  sort  of  imaginative  and  intellectual  basis  for  it 
led  Lord  Beaconsfield  to  write  his  three  ablest  novels, 
Coningsby,  Sybil,  and  Tancred,  in  which  his  doctrines 
of  Church  and  State  are  set  forth  in  blended  disquisi- 
tion and  narratives.  England  was  to  be  saved  by  its 
youth,  and  especially  by  its  aristocratic  youth  ;  alms- 
giving was  to  be  restored  ;  young  noblemen  and  gen- 
tlemen were  to  dance  with  charming  female  peasants 
in  parks,  and  to  play  cricket  on  village  greens  with 
athletic  and  docile  rustics.  The  direct  power  of  the 
Crown  was  to  be  exercised  for  the  benefit  of  the 
people  at  large,  unfettered  by  a  selfish  and  for  the 
greater  part  ignoble  parvenu  oligarchy  and  a  rapa- 
cious House  of  Commons,  and  the  principles  of 
government  encouraged  by  Charles  I.,  the  martyr 
of  direct  taxation,  were  to  be  established  once  more. 
The  Church  was  to  return  to  its  proper  work  of  diffus- 
ing Asian  ideas  among  the  flat-nosed  Franks.  "  Is 
our  civilisation  a  failure  ?  "  asks  an  American  poet, 
"  or  is  the  Caucasian  played  out  ?  "  Our  civilisation 
is  a  failure,  Lord  Beaconsfield  contended,  but  the 
Caucasian,  the  unmixed  Caucasian,  who  in  Lord 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  131 

Beacon  sfield's  eccentric  ethnological  nomenclature  is 
the  Jew,  was  only  now  beginning,  in  Lord  Beacons- 
field's  person,  to  play  his  proper  part  in  English  poli- 
tics. Although  the  youthful  aristocracy  and  country 
gentry  were  to  be  the  instruments  of  this  great  res- 
toration, the  humble  aid  of  the  right-minded  manu- 
facturer was  not  altogether  rejected.  Milbank  is 
admitted  into  companionship  with  Coningsby  and 
Henry  Sydney ;  and  Young  England,  in  a  body,  made 
a  missionary  journey  to  the  Manchester  Athenaeum, 
and  preached  the  gospel  to  heathen  capitalists  and 
anxiously  inquiring  clerks  and  shopkeepers.  It  is 
difficult  to  feel  certain  whether  or  not  the  whole 
scheme  of  Young  England,  political  and  literary,  was 
a  mystification.  Lord  Beaconsfield's  most  fantastic 
notions  are  apparently  his  most  genuine  beliefs.  His 
practical  politics  are  but  the  accommodations  of  an 
Eastern  mind  and  character  to  the  habits  of  the 
foreign  country  in  which  he  lives.  Young  England, 
however,  was  but  a  passing  dream  from  which  Mr. 
Disraeli  soon  awoke.  Coningsby  attached  himself  to 
the  traitor  and  miscreant  Peel,  and  became  his  Un- 
der Secretary  of  State  for  Foreign  Affairs.  The 
growing  distrust  felt  towards  the  Prime  Minister,  as 


132  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

he  pursued  his  liberalising  course  in  economic  policy, 
made  a  Protectionist  party  possible,  and  to  its  forma- 
tion Mr.  Disraeli  addressed  himself. 

His  alliance  for  this  purpose  with  Lord  George 
Bentinck  is  one  of  the  most  curious  incidents  of  his 
career.  Lord  George  Bentinck  was  everything  which 
up  to  a  recent  period  Lord  Beaconsfield  had  de- 
nounced. He  was,  as  Lord  Beaconsfield  himself 
records,  by  descent  and  in  political  connection,  a 
Whig  of  1689.  He  held  to  the  old-fashioned  Whig 
notions  of  toleration,  and  voted,  at  the  risk  of  forfeit- 
ing his  newly  won  leadership,  for  the  emancipation  of 
the  Jews  on  grounds  of  religious  freedom,  and,  not 
with  Lord  Beaconsfield,  on  grounds  of  religious  truth. 
He  had  a  strong  jealousy  of  that  influence  of  the 
Court  which  Lord  Beaconsfield  would  augment  at  the 
expense  of  the  power  of  Parliament.  He  held  those 
Protectionist  doctrines  in  commerce  to  which  Lord 
Beaconsfield  was  now  a  professing  convert,  but  which 
a  few  years  ago  he  had  stigmatized  as  a  part  of  the 
selfish  policy  of  the  Whig  aristocracy.  But  though 
he  loved  Protection  much,  he  hated  Peel  more ;  and 
of  this  feeling  common  to  him  with  the  majority  of 
the  Conservative  country  gentlemen,  Lord  Beacons- 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD.  133 

field  condescended  to  make  himself  the  organ.  He 
barbed  and  winged  the  heavy  arrows  of  their  malice, 
and  gave  literary  force  to  their  uncouth  and  inarticu- 
late spite. 

The  language  which  Mr.  Disraeli  had  for  most  of 
his  life  used  with  respect  to  Peel,  his  elaborate  justi- 
fication of  the  doctrines  of  free  trade  as  the  true  and 
traditional  Tory  policy,  and  his  defence  of  Peel's 
principle  of  opportunism  and  accommodation  to  cir- 
cumstances as  the  essential  condition  of  modern 
statesmanship,  have  been  already  spoken  of.  It  was 
competent  to  Lord  Beaconsfield  to  alter  his  opinions 
on  these  points,  if  he  had  any  opinions  to  alter,  and 
if  he  had  a  sufficient  motive  for  doing  so.  But,  apart 
from  the  character  of  the  person  assuming  to  be  a 
censor,  it  was  not  within  his  moral  right  to  stigmatize 
conduct  which  with  full  knowledge  he  had  eulogised, 
and  principles  of  political  casuistry  which  he  himself 
had  set  forth.  This  ex  post  facto  condemnation  of 
.things  once  approved,  assumes  that  they  had  ac- 
quired from  the  personal  vindictiveness  of  the  assail- 
ant an  _un worthiness  which  did  not  originally  or  in- 
trinsically belong  to  them.  To  accusations  of  politi- 
cal treason  to  his  party,  accusations  which  Lord  Bea- 


134  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

consfield  had  himself  elaborately  refuted  in  advance, 
were  added  imputations  indescribably  base  of  per- 
sonal un truthfulness  and  treachery  in  Peel's  treatment 
of  Canning.  The  dull  mind  of  Lord  George  Bentinck 
was  probably  not  aware  of  the  wrong  he  was  doing. 
Lord  Beaconsfield  cannot  accept  this  excuse ;  and  his 
own  keen  pleasure  in  the  pain  which  he  inflicted  on 
Peel  was  obvious  to  every  one  who  listened  night 
after  night  to  his  attacks.  Patriotism  and  the  charity 
which  sinks  its  personal  feelings  in  a  passion  for  the 
public  good  have  perhaps  reached  their  highest  ex- 
pression in  the  spectacle,  which  has  been  exhibited 
during  the  present  year,  of  the  son  of  Sir  Robert 
Peel,  the  inheritor  of  his  name  and  his  title,  protest- 
ing his  unbounded  confidence  in  Lord  Beaconsfield, 
and  rallying  opinion  to  his  support  in  the  House  of 
Commons  and  on  demagogic  platforms.  The  ties  of 
blood  and  the  memory  of  unexampled  outrage  are  as 
nothing  compared  with  a  constraining  sense  of  public 
duty.  The  repeal  of  the  Corn  Laws  was  followed  by 
the  defeat  of  Sir  Robert  Peel  on  the  Irish  Coercion 
Bill,  through  a  coalition  of  Whigs  and  Protectionists. 
A  Liberal  Government  presided  over  by  Lord  John 
Russell  succeeded. 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  135 

We  have  seen  that  it  was  as  the  disciple  of  Sir 
Robert  Peel  that  Lord  Beaconsfield  found  his  way 
into  the  Parliaments  of  1837  and  1841.  It  was  as  his 
assailant  that  he  made  his  first  step  to  the  position* 
which  he  now  occupies.  Yet  it  may  be  said  with 
truth  that  Lord  Beaconsfield' s  estimate  of  the  man 
has  never  changed.  He  always  recognised  in  him 
precisely  the  same  qualities,  eulogising  them  at  one 
moment  as  marks  of  the  most  consummate  states- 
manship, and  at  another  as  proofs  of  the  meanest 
peddling  in  politics.  Some  of  the  sentences  in  which 
he  denounced  or  ridiculed  Peel  are  worth  quoting : 
"  When  I  examine  the  career  of  this  minister,  which 
has  now  filled  a  great  space  in  the  parliamentary  his- 
tory of  this  country,  I  find  that  for  between  thirty 
and  forty  years,  from  the  days  of  Horner  to  the  days 
of  the  honourable  member  for  Stockport  (Mr.  Cob- 
den),  the  right  honourable  gentleman  has  traded  on 
the  ideas  and  intelligence  of  others."  Perhaps  we 
may  say  in  parentheses  that  this  is  better  than  trad- 
ing on  their  want  of  ideas  and  their  absence  of  intel- 
ligence, as  later  Conservative  statesmen  have  done. 
"  His  life  has  been  one  great  appropriation  clause. 
He  is  a  burglar  of  others'  intellect.  Search  the 


136  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

index  of  Beatson  from  the  days  of  the  Conqueror  to 
the  termination  of  the  last  reign,  there  is  no  states- 
man who  has  committed  political  petty  larceny  on  so 
great  a  scale."  The  most  striking  instance  of  this 
petty  larceny  is  well  known.  "  The  right  honourable 
gentleman  caught  the  Whigs  bathing,  and  walked 
away  with  their  clothes.  He  has  left  them  in  the  full 
enjoyment  of  their  Liberal  position,  and  he  is  himself 
a  strict  Conservative  of  their  garments."  Again  : 
"  Something  has  risen  up  in  this  country  as  fatal  in 
the  political  world  as  it  has  been  in  the  landed  world 
of  Ireland — we  have  a  great  parliamentary  middle- 
man. It  is  well  known  what  a  middle-man  is.  He 
is  a  man  who  bamboozles  one  party  and  plunders  the 
other,  till,  having  obtained  a  position  to  which  he  is 
not  entitled,  he  cries  out,  '  Let  us  have  no  party 
questions,  but  fixity  of  tenure.'  "  Against  this  degra- 
dation of  statesmanship  Mr.  Disraeli  protested  in 
lofty  moral  tones.  "While  we  are  admitting,''  he 
said,  "  the  principles  of  relaxed  commerce,  there  is 
extreme  danger  of  our  admitting  the  principles  of 
relaxed  politics.  I  advise,  therefore,  that  we  all, 
whatever  may  be  our  opinion  about  free  trade, 
oppose  the  introduction  of  free  politics.  Let  men 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  137 

stand  by  the  principles  by  which  they  rise,  right  or 
wrong.  I  make  no  exception.  If  they  be  in  the 
wrong,  they  must  retire  to  that  shade  of  private  life 
with  which  our  present  rulers  have  often  threatened 
us."  "  My  conception  of  a  great  statesman  is  of  one 
who  represents  a  great  idea — an  idea  which  may  lead 
him  to  power,  an  idea  with  which  he  may  identify 
himself,  an  idea  which  he  may  develope,  an  idea 
which  he  may  and  can  impress  on  the  mind  and  con- 
science of  the  nation.  That,  sir,  is  my  notion  of  a 
great  statesman.  I  do  not  care  whether  he  be  a 
manufacturer  or  a  manufacturer's  son.  But  I  care 
not  what  may  be  the  position  of  a  man  who  never 
originates  an  idea,  a  watcher  of  the  atmosphere,  a 
man  who,  as  he  says,  takes  his  observations,  and 
when  he  finds  the  wind  in  a  certain  quarter  turns  to 
suit  it.  Such  a  person  may  be  a  powerful  minister, 
but  he  is  no  more  a  great  statesman  than  the  man 
who  gets  up  behind  a  carriage  is  a  great  whip." 

There  is  much  more  to  the  same  effect.  Lord 
Beaconsfield  has  always  been  a  master  of  the  art  of 
saying  the  same  thing  in  many  different  ways.  These 
citations  are  perhaps  among  the  best  examples  that 
could  be  furnished  of  that  very  peculiar  intellectual 


138  POLITICAL  ADVENTURES    OF 

product,  House  of  Commons  wit.  "  Scotch  wit  "  has 
passed  into  a  proverb,  as  an  example  of  what  logi- 
cians call  the  contradictio  in  adjecto,  the  adjective 
qualifying  the  substantive  much  as  in  the  case  of 
German  silver,  or  (to  be  quite  impartial)  Britannia 
metal,  or  Brummagem  plate  are  qualified.  In  like 
manner  House  of  Commons  wit  simulates  the  sort  of 
thing  which  is  called  wit  in  other  connections,  with- 
out really  being  so.  It  is  generally  recognisable  by 
the  "laughter"  which  the  reporters  kindly  append 
to  its  recorded  utterance.  Lord  Beaconsfield  has 
always  been  a  master  in  the  production  of  this  com- 
modity, and  he  sometimes  gives  the  genuine  thing. 
This  is  a  digression.  We  shall  speak  of  him  after- 
wards as  a  parliamentary  orator.  What  we  are  now 
concerned  with  is  his  theory  of  statesmanship.  If  he 
had  been  contrasting  the  higher  and  the  lower  orders 
of  statesmanship,  little  exception  could  be  taken  to 
his  doctrine.  Peel. certainly  was  not  a  statesman  of 
the  first  rank.  He  was  not  an  originator.  If  he  had 
been,  he  probably  would  not  have  been  a  politician ; 
he  certainly  would  not  have  been  a  Minister  of  State 
in  England.  He  might  have  been  a  professor,  a 
writer  of  books,  or  an  agitator,  but  he  would  never 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  139 

have  been  an  official  statesman.  The  closest  ap- 
proach which  any  one  has  made  in  modern  times  to 
Lord  Beaconsfield's  idea  of  statesmanship  was  made 
by  Mazzini,  whom  Lord  Beaconsfield  would  probably 
deny  to  be  a  statesman  at  all.  He,  if  any  one  ever 
did,  represented  an  idea,  not  indeed  an  idea  which 
led  him  to  power,  in  the  sense  in  which  Lord  Bea- 
consfield understands  power,  since  it  doomed  him  to 
imprisonment,  exile,  and  poverty.  Still  it  was  one 
which  he  impressed  on  the  mind  and  conscience  of 
his  country,  with  which  he  indentified  himself,  and 
which  he  developed.  In  Lord  Beaconsfield's  sense, 
Mazzini  was  a  greater  statesman  than  Cavour.  In 
the  same  sense,  Burke  was  a  statesman  when  he 
raged  in  prophetic  fury  against  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, carrying  the  national  feeling  with  him  in  his 
frenzy,  but  not  when  he  framed  and  carried  his 
scheme  of  economic  reform.  Cobden,  as  a  free- 
trader, was  a  statesman  and  Peel  was  not.  Mr. 
Bright,  in  his  agitation  for  household  suffrage,  showed 
a  statesmanship  which  Lord  Beaconsfield  did  not  dis- 
play in  passing  the  bill  for  which  that  agitation  pre- 
pared the  way  and  created  the  necessity.  The  fact 
probably  is  that  statesmanship,  as  a  merely  practical 


140  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

art,  does  not  deserve  the  high  intellectual  ranlt  some- 
times assigned  to  it.  Original  ideas  are  out  of  place 
in  it.  The  statesman  in  modern  times  and  in  quiet 
days  is  four  or  five  removes  from  originality.  This 
was  so  with  Peel.  The  originator,  so  far  as  English 
theory  and  practice  is  concerned,  of  sound  economic 
ideas  was  Adam  Smith.  Between  him  and  Sir 
Robert  Peel,  popular  exponents  of  economic  doc- 
trine, such  as  Bastiat  in  France,  and  Colonel  Perro- 
net  Thompson  in  England,  authors  of  Economic  So- 
pliisms  and  Catechisms  of  Free  Trade,  have  first  to 
be  interposed.  But  they  are  only  the  first  link  in  the 
chain.  Then  came  the  popular  agitation  of  Cobden 
and  Bright,  and  the  Parliamentary  advocacy  of  Mr. 
Villiers.  Last  in  the  chain,  and  dragged  along  by  it, 
conquered  rather  than  conquering,  comes  the  suc- 
cessful Minister  with  whose  name  the  hardly-won 
reform  is  associated.  The  discoverer,  the  expositor, 
the  agitator,  the  Parliamentary  leader  —  educated 
opinion,  popular  opinion,  House  of  Commons  opin- 
ion, and  ministerial  conversion  or  apostasy — two 
words  for  the  same  thing  looked  at  with  hostile  or 
friendly  eyes — these  are  the  stages  by  which  a  vital 
political  idea  struggles  into  realisation.  To  complain 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  14! 

that  a  statesman  does  not  originate  is  to  utter  treason 
against  the  doctrine  of  the  division  of  labour.  He 
simply  delivers  the  article  that  others  have  made.  If 
Sir  Robert  Peel  had  originated  anything  in  theory,  he 
would  probably  have  failed  directly  to  accomplish 
anything  in  practice.  He  would  have  been  Adam 
Smith  and  not  Sir  Robert  Peel.  He  was  the  convert, 
the  honest  convert,  of  public  opinion.  His  mind  by 
a  sort  of  pre-established  harmony  was  so  constituted 
as  to  see  what  ought  to  be  done  just  when  the  mo- 
ment for  doing  it  had  arrived,  but  not  a  moment  too 
soon  nor  a  moment  too  late.  Such  an  intelligence 
is  not  of  the  highest  order.  But  it  is  useful  in  the 
conduct  of  life.  The  proper  contrast  is  not  that 
which  Lord  Beaconsfield  draws  between  the  adapting 
and  adopting  statesman  and  the  originator  ;  but  be- 
tween the  statesman  who  gives  eifect  to  tardy  and  yet 
timely  convictions,  and  the  trading  politician  who  re- 
sists measures  which  he  knows  in  his  heart  to  be  just 
and  expedient  in  order  to  humour  a  faction  or  tc 
gratify  personal  spite  and  ambition.  The  Conserva- 
tive party  has  within  a  generation  had  leaders  of  both 
sorts.  It  is  worth  noting  by  those  who  think  that  in 
politics  we  still  have  judgment  here,  that  Sir  Robert 


142  POLITICAL  ADVENTURES   OF 

Peel  died  an  exile  from  his  party,  distrusted  and 
hated  by  them ;  and  that  Lord  Beaconsfield  is  able 
to  boast  of  unwavering  majorities  in  both  Houses,  of 
the  confidence  of  the  Crown,  and  of  the  enthusiastic 
support  of  the  mobs  and  music  halls  which  he  sup- 
poses to  represent  the  country. 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  143 


IV. 

FROM  1852  TO  AUGUST,  1878. 

THE  sensible  public  is  never  blinded  by  the  vdgar 
glitter  of  stars  and  garters.  Wise  Frenchmen  saw 
behind  the  splendour  of  the  Tuileries  the  Man  of 
December,  and  waited  for  Mexico  and  Sedan.  Eng- 
lishmen with  good  memories  see  under  this  new 
blue  riband  the  political  bravo  who  struck  at  Peel. 
The  scenic  effects  have  undoubtedly  been  good. 
Not  satisfied  with  his  triumphs  on  the  domestic 
stage,  Lord  Beaconsfield  was  ambitious  of  performing 
a  great  part  on  foreign  boards.  To  add  to  the 
theatric  effect,  he  was  attended,  as  the  Court  Circu- 
lar says  of  royal  personages  and  their  humble  com- 
panions, by  the  Marquis  of  Salisbury.  This  strange 
companionship  has  been  one  of  the  small  surprises 
of  the  day.  In  an  amusing  passage  in  one  of  his 
speeches,  Lord  Beaconsfield  accounted  for  the  prac- 
tice of  twofold  parliamentary  representation.  Two 


144  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

members,  according  to  him,  were  chosen,  because 
neither  dared  go  alone.  They  travelled  together, 
because  they  were  afraid  of  robbers ;  they  slept  in 
the  same  room,  because  they  were  afraid  of  ghosts. 
We  forget  whether  he  added  that  each  went  to  keep 
an  eye  on  the  other,  whom  he  distrusted.  Possibly 
Lord  Beaconsfield  and  Lord  Salisbury  have  been  as- 
sociated on  the  principle  which  is  said  in  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church  to  require  that  members  of  certain 
religious  orders  shall  work  and  travel  in  pairs,  so  as 
to  give  an  external  guarantee  for  zeal  and  good  be- 
haviour. With  the  recollection  of  the  things  said 
and  done  by  Lord  Salisbury  in  Constantinople,  Lord 
Beaconsfield  may  not  have  been  prepared  to  trust  his 
colleague  out  of  his  sight.  In  the  presence  of  the 
Prime  Minister  the  Foreign  Secretary  could  be  only 
in  name  a  Plenipotentiary. 

By  remaining  in  the  Cabinet,  after  the  retirement 
of  Lord  Carnarvon  and  Lord  Derby,  Lord  Salisbury 
has  probably  secured  for  himself  the  reversion  of  the 
Premiership.  To  rise  very  high,  he  has  stooped  very 
low,  and  he  may  find  it  necessary  to  stoop  lower  yet. 
He  has  apparently  adopted  to  the  full  those  ethics  of 
political  adventure  which  he  once  denounced  in  the 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  145 

bitterest .  and  the  most  scornful  language,  and  in 
which  he  foresaw  the  degradation  of  English  public 
life  through  the  lowering  of  the  character  of  English 
public  men.  In  the  controversy  which  followed  his 
secession  from  Lord  Derby's  administration  in  1867, 
he  pointed  to  the  character  and  conduct  of  Lord 
Beaconsfield  as  of  evil  omen  for  England.  Lord 
Beaconsfield  smiled  then  ;  he  has  better  reason  for 
smiling  now.  The  bitter  assailant  has  become  the 
humble  disciple ;  the  scandalized  moralist  has  been 
the  adroit  abettor  and  imitator.  The  legerdemain  of 
the  secret  agreement  with  Russia,  balanced  by  the 
secret  convention  with  Turkey,  was  not  a  combina- 
tion of  a  very  high  intellectual  order ;  but  it  showed 
a  superiority  to  moral  scruples,  to  which  happily  it  is 
difficult  to  find  a  parallel  in  English  diplomacy.  The 
British  Plenipotentiaries  at  the  Congress  were  play- 
ing with  cards  in  their  sleeves.  Lord  Salisbury  has 
acquired  Lord  Beaconsfield's  art  of  answering,  using 
words  in  a  double  sense,  one  intended  to  reassure 
his  hearers  at  the  moment  ;  the  other,  when  the  trick 
comes  to  light,  to  furnish  a  justification  for  himself. 
His  denial  of  dissensions  in  the  Cabinet,  and  his 
repudiation  of  the  Globe  copy  cf  the  Anglo-Russian 


146  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

agreement,  were  conveyed  in  words  which  meant  on« 
thing  to  him  and  another  to  his  hearers.  His  contra- 
diction of  Lord  Derby's  statement  as  to  his  motives 
in  quitting  office  requires  to  be  taken,  therefore,  with 
the  greatest  reserve.  Henceforward,  indeed,  Lord 
Salisbury's  statements  will  need  an  interpretation 
clause,  such  as  is  found  in  acts  of  parliament,  deter- 
mining that  such  and  such  a  term  shall  be  taken  in 
such  and  such  a  meaning.  Lord  Salisbury  has  made 
a  sacrifice  of  political  character  to  his  political  for- 
tunes. He  will  probably  find  before  long  that  even 
from  the  point  of  view  of  personal  ambition  only,  he 
has  made  a  mistake  which  it  will  take  many  years  to 
repair.  The  trick  played  upon  the  Congress  by  the 
two  secret  agreements  with  Russia  and  Turkey  is, 
however,  less  censurable  than  the  trick  played 
through  the  same  instruments  upon  England  herself. 
The  nation  has  been  committed  to  a  task  not  simply 
difficult  and  dangerous, — difficulty  and  danger  may 
l>e  confronted  and  overcome, — but  to  obligations 
which  it  is  impossible  to  discharge.  England  and 
Turkey  have  been  drawing  bills  upon  each  other, 
which  cannot  be  paid,  and  offering  them  to  Europe 
as  good  security.  The  protectorate  over  Asia  Minor, 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  147 

of  which  the  occupation  of  Cyprus  is  simply  one  of 
the  conditions,  is  a  piece  of  gigantic  charlatanism. 
Lord  Beaconsfield's  triumphant  entry  into  London, 
and  the  theatrical  procession  from  Charing  Cross, 
was  a  bit  of  harlequinade  from  which,  one  would 
have  thought,  the  self-respect  and  reserve  of  an  Eng- 
lish statesman  and  gentleman  would  have  shrunk. 
Neither  Lord  Beaconsfield  nor  Lord  Salisbury 
showed  any  shrinking.  A  troop  of  horse-riders  visits 
a  country  town  much  in  the  same  way,  and  endeav- 
ours to  bring  idlers  to  its  booth,  as  Lord  Beacons- 
field  tried  to  manage  public  opinion.  The  whole 
thing  was  mountebank  to  the  last  degree  ;  but  it  was 
not  the  less  in  harmony  with  the  career  of  the  Cag- 
liostro-Chatham  who  was  its  principal  figure.  Lord 
Salisbury  was  a  secondary  figure  in  the  parade.  To 
some  who,  on  the  i6th  of  July,  observed  him  sitting 
in  the  same  carriage  with  Lord  Beaconsneld,  and 
humbly  taking  the  dregs  of  mob  applause  after  his 
chief  had  drained  the  cup,  Sydney  Herbert's  indig- 
nant scorn  may  have  recurred  ;  and  they  may  have 
applied  to  Lord  Salisbury  the  remarks  which  he 
addressed  to  Mr.  Disraeli  sitting  on  the  Treasury 
Bench,  and  professing  a  free-trade  policy, — "  If  a 


148  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

man  wants  to  see  humiliation,  which  God  knows  is 
always  a  painful  sight,  he  needs  bnt  look  there." 

The  apologists  for  Lord  Beaconsfield  may,  how- 
ever, plead  excuses  for  him,  which  cannot  be  urged 
on  behalf  of  Lord  Salisbury.  One  of  the  earliest 
critics  of  Vanity  Fair  suggested  a  parallel  which 
must  have  occurred  to  many  other  people.  "  If 
Becky  could  have  changed  sexes  with  her  husband, 
all  would  have  gone  well.  She  might  have  can- 
vassed a  borough  as  a  Radical,  and  a  county  as  a 
Tory ;  might  have  gained  the  ear  of  the  House  by 
malignity,  and  kept  it  by  effrontery  ;  might  have  risen 
into  notoriety  by  attacking  the  first  men  of  the  age, 
and  become  the  leader  of  a  party  by  joining  one 
which  all  persons  of  sense  had  deserted."  In  one 
most  important  respect,  Lord  Beaconsfield  was  more 
fortunate  than  his  feminine  counterpart.  His  Jos. 
Sedley  and  Rawdon  Crawley  periods,  his  coquettings 
with  young  England  and  Protectionist  boobies,  had 
a  sequel  to  which  there  is  nothing  corresponding  in 
the  social  adventures  of  Miss  Becky  Sharp.  His 
alliance  with  Lord  Derby  (to  speak  in  terms  derived 
from  the  vicissitudes  of  the  other  sex)  made  a  respect- 
able man  of  Mr.  Disraeli.  Henceforth  he  was  re- 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD.  149 

ceived  into  the  purest  and  most  virtuous  society.  A 
veil  was  drawn  over  the  past,  and  no  curious  inqui- 
ries were  to  be  made. 

The  death  of  Lord  George  Bentinck,  in  1848,  made 
Lord  Beaconsfield  the  real  leader  of  the  Protectionist 
faction  ;  and  his  acceptance  by  the  late  Lord  Derby, 
then  the  head  of  the  Tory  party,  made  him,  after 
Peel's  death,  the  conservative  leader  in  the  House  of 
Commons.  This  officious  position  became  official 
with  his  appointment,  in  1852,  as  Chancellor  of  the 
Exchequer  in  Lord  Derby's  first  administration. 
Though  Lord  Beaconsfield  has  three  times  held  this 
office,  no  one  has  ever  thought  of  him  as  a  minister  of 
finance.  He  was  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer  in 
1852,  in  1857,  and  in  1866,  because  it  was  necessary 
that,  as  ministerial  leader  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, he  should  hold  one  of  the  great  offices  of  State, 
and  because  this  particular  office  was  the  only  one 
which  it  suited  the  royal  pleasure  that  Lord  Beacons- 
field  at  that  time  should  hold.  The  usage  which  made 
it  necessary  that  one  of  the  Secretaries  of  State  should 
be  the  minister  in  attendance  upon  the  Queen,  was 
in  force  when  Lord  Derby  formed  his  first  administra- 
tion in  1852  ;  and  the  objection  of  the  Queen  to  have 


150  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

Lord  Beaconsfield  as  one  of  the  ministers  in  attend- 
ance upon  her  was,  there  is  good  ground  for  believing, 
the  reason  for  his  appointment  to  the  almost  ludi- 
crously unsuitable  office  of  Chancellor  of  the  Exche- 
quer. Lord  Beaconsfield  was  a  finance  minister  who 
never  affected  to  know  or  care  much  about  finance  ; 
and  having  mastered  his  budgets  sufficiently  to  make 
the  opening  statement  with  credit,  left  the  details  to 
be  fought  out  by  Secretaries  of  the  Treasury  and  other 
statistical  persons — the  calculating  boys  of  the  Gov- 
ernment, who  had  a  shopkeeper's  acquaintance  with 
Cocker  and  his  rules.  The  sublime  indifference  with 
which  Lord  Beaconsfield  used  to  look  on,  or  scarcely 
to  look  on  at  these  encounters,  but  rather  to  detach 
himself  in  apparently  profound  reveries  from  the  de- 
tails of  the  department  of  which  he  was  the  responsi- 
ble head,  will  be  remembered  by  all  who  knew  the 
House  of  Commons  during  his  Chancellorship.  Dux 
sum  et  super  arithmeticam — "  I  am  the  leader  of  the 
House  of  Commons,  and  have  nothing  to  do  with  fig- 
ures " — was  a  sentiment  impressed  on  his  whole  atti- 
tude and  bearing.  The  inconvenient  limitation  upon 
freedom  of  ministerial  arrangements,  of  which  we  have 
spoken,  and  consequent  hindrance  to  the  efficient  con- 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  151 

duct  of  public  business,  exist  no  longer.  But  there 
were  compensations.  If  the  old  usage  had  been  de- 
parted from  earlier,  Lord  Beaconsfield's  decisive  influ- 
ence on  the  conduct  of  public  affairs  would  possibly 
have  been  anticipated  by  some  twenty  years  or  so. 
The  first  condition  of  Lord  Beaconsfield's  success  is 
that  he  has  been  a  devoted  leader.  For  more  than  a 
quarter  of  a  century  he  has  given  himself  up  to  the 
service  of  the  Conservative  party,  abandoning  his 
whole  mind  and  energies  to  them,  and  making  a  sac- 
rifice of  literary  taste  and  ambition  and  social  leisure 
to  the  task  which  he  had  undertaken.  He  has  not 
tried  to  serve  two  masters.  He  has  acknowledged  no 
conflict  between  a  higher  and  a  lower  law.  The  vii 
tue  which  he  has  shown  is  not  the  highest,  nor  is  the 
recompense  which  he  has  reaped  the  noblest.  But 
the  one  is  appropriate  to  the  other.  He  has  been 
a  vigilant  and  faithful  party  leader,  and  he  has  reaped 
a  vigilant  and  faithful  party  leader's  reward.  His 
minutest  attention  has  been  given  to  everything  which 
could  keep  his  followers  together.  Youthful  aspirants 
have  been  flattered  and  encouraged ;  disappointed 
vanities  have  been  soothed,  and  elderly  ambitions 
have  been  satisfied.  Mr.  Gladstone  has  had  highei 


152  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

aims  and  has  done  a  nobler  work  than  Lord  Beacons- 
field  ;  but  he  neglected  the  ordinary  arts  of  party  man- 
agement while  he  was  Prime  Minister,  and  threw  up 
the  leadership  when  he  grew  tired  of  it.  The  mere 
party  feeling  which  the  two  men  excite,  reflects  the 
faults  of  the  greater  and  better  man,  and  the  merits 
of  the  lower  mind  and  character  ;  and  in  both  cases 
is  natural  and  inevitable.  The  qualities  which  have 
helped  the  one  and  hindered  the  other  in  Parliament 
and  the  world,  may  possibly  have  had  corresponding 
effects  at  Court.  Whatever  Lord  Beaconsfield's  gifts, 
it  is  only  since  the  retirement  of  the  late  Lord  Derby, 
and  his  own  appointment  to  the  Premiership  ten  years 
ago,  that  he  has  had  the  opportunity  of  practising 
them  at  Windsor  and  Balmoral.  His  doctrines  of  the 
personal  power  of  the  monarch,  and  his  or  her  place 
and  work  in  the  constitution,  are  naturally  acceptable 
to  holders  and  expectants  of  the  royal  office ;  and 
there  is  some  truth  probably  in  the  current  opinion 
that,  since  he  has  been  First  Minister  of  the  Crown, 
the  sovereign  and  the  heir  apparent  have  played  a 
larger  part  in  public  business,  and  especially  in  the 
control  of  foreign  policy,  than  at  any  period  since  the 
reign  of  George  HI.  Lord  Beaconsfield  is  not  the 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  153 

man,  like  George  Grenville,  and  perhaps  later  minis- 
ters, to  be  wearisome  and  dictatorial  in  the  royal 
closet,  and  to  present  the  decisions  of  the  Cabinet  as 
edicts  to  be  registered  in  a  royal  bed  of  justice.  The 
power  of  the  sovereign  has  been  revived  and  aggran- 
dized under  his  direction.  In  any  future  contrasts 
which  may  be  drawn  between  constitutional  monarchy 
in  England  and  the  Republican  system,  it  may  be  de- 
sirable to  keep  in  mind  that  the  former  is  not  neces- 
sarily as  pure  an  example  of  government  by  Cabinet 
government — that  is  to  say,  by  a  committee  of  both 
Houses,  responsible  to  the  elected  Chamber — as  it 
has  of  late  been  assumed  to  be. 

Lord  Beaconsfield's  influence  in  debate  is  due,  in 
part,  to  the  qualities  which  we  have  described,  and  is 
certainly  not  owing  to  that  business-like  directness 
and  knowledge  of  affairs  which  it  is  customary  to 
represent  as  the  essential  conditions,  in  our  times,  of 
authority  in  the  House  of  Commons.  As  a  parlia- 
mentary orator,  he  may  claim  the  verdict  of  success. 
There  is  no  man  who  is  more  to  the  taste  of  both 
Houses,  whose  rising  has  always  been  hailed  with 
more  expectant  curiosity,  who  is  rewarded  with  closer 
attention,  and  who  is  greeted  with  prompter  laughter 


154  POLITICAL  ADVENTURES    OF 

and  applause,  with  that  gathering  and  swelling  nmr- 
mur  of  cheers  which  is  to  the  parliamentary  speaker 
what  the  sound  of  meeting  palms  is  to  the  actoi.  Yet 
Lord  Beaconsfield  is  by  no  means  an  ideal  orator. 
Mechanism,  and  not  life,  characterizes  his  speaking. 
Vivian  Grey,  in  reviewing  his  resources  for  playing  the 
part  of  a  political  impostor,  counts  as  the  principal 
among  them  that  he  "  can  perform  right  skilfully  upon 
that  most  splendid  of  musical  instruments — the  human 
voice."  Lord  Beaconsfteld's  voice  is  a  powerful  and 
delicate  organ,  capable  of  almost  all  tones  and  inflex- 
ions ;  but  it  is  an  instrument  on  which  an  external 
artist  appears  to  be  performing,  pulling  out  the  stops, 
and  putting  down  the  pedals,  and  pressing  the  keys. 
So  with  his  gestures  ;  they  are  often  vehement  and 
excited,  but  they  are  always  angular  and  stiff.  Some- 
body seems  to  be  jerking  strings  or  wires,  with  more 
or  less  force  and  skill.  There  is  a  game  which  chil- 
dren are  fond  of  seeing  played,  in  which  two  persons 
are  concealed  behind  a  curtain,  the  head  of  one  and  the 
arms  of  the  other  only  appearing.  The  head  declaims 
and  the  arms  gesticulate  as  nearly  in  harmony  as  may 
be,  or  with  as  ridiculous  an  incongruity  as  can  be  de- 
vised. Lord  Beaconsfield's  voice  and  gestures  never 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  155 

seem  to  be  in  much  closer  relation  to  each  other  than 
those  of  the  composite  orator  of  the  children's  game. 
You  never,  as  with  Mr.  Gladstone  and  Mr.  Bright,  see 
the  whole  man,  thought,  feeling,  voice,  and  frame, 
fused  into  a  single  expression  of  the  ruling  mood  or 
idea.  Instead  of  losing  the  parts  in  the  whole,  the 
whole  seems  always  with  Lord  Beaconsfield  to  be  re- 
solving itself  into  its  parts.  There  is  no  nature,  there 
is  not  even  consummate  art,  which  is  but  the  most 
perfect  and  careful  expression  of  nature ;  but  there 
is  very  dexterous  artifice,  and  you  are  pleased,  as 
with  the  exhibition  of  a  difficult  and  cleverly-exe- 
cuted trick.  The  interest  which  Lord  Beaconsfield's 
speeches  excite  and  repay  is  that  of  a  public  enter- 
tainment. He  is  essentially  a  comedian. 

The  descriptions  which  are  from  time  to  time 
given  of  him  proceed  upon  this  assumption,  often 
unconsciously  made,  of  his  real  character  in  public 
life.  We  are  told,  as  if  an  opera  singer  was  in  ques- 
tion, that  on  such  and  such  an  occasion  he  was  in 
capital  voice,  and  his  make-up  is  criticized,  or  rather 
described,  with  admiring  particularity.  As  to  the 
substance  of  his  speeches,  they  present  the  same 
characteristic  of  parts  not  fused  into  a  whole,  which 


156  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

is  exhibited  in  his  manner.  Dazzling  ornaments, 
precious  stones  or  painted  glass,  diamonds  or  paste, 
are  strung  together  on  a  piece  of  common  tw.'ne. 
When  Lord  Beaconsfield  has  to  make  a  long  exposi- 
tion or  a  protracted  argument,  nothing  can  be  drea- 
rier; he  has  seldom  mastered  his  subject  as  a  whole, 
and  he  does  not  put  it  clearly  before  the  House.  In 
his  financial  statements  and  in  his  Reform  Bill 
speeches,  and  on  nearly  every  occasion  on  which  he 
has  had  to  place  a  complicated  topic  before  parlia- 
ment at  the  opening  of  the  debate,  Lord  Beacons- 
field  was  evidently  speaking  from  cram,  like  a  counsel 
who  has  hurriedly  read  his  brief,  and  relies  upon  his 
juniors  and  his  solicitors.  A  casual  objection  or  in- 
quiry which  interrupted  the  thread  of  his  prepared 
statements  is,  or  was — for  in  the  House  of  Lords 
Lord  Beaconsfield  seldom  undertakes  work  of  this 
sort — met  with  a  joke  or  with  a  reference  of  the  ob- 
jector to  some  future  occasion.  Mr.  Gladstone,  on 
the  other  hand,  in  being  the  absolute  master  of  de- 
tails, is  in  turn  occasionally  mastered  by  them.  They 
assume,  now  and  then,  a  magnitude  before  his  mind 
which  is  out  of  proportion  to  the  whole  subject,  and 
which  is  checked  only  by  his  equal  knowledge  of  all 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  157 

other  details.  Lord  Beaconsfield  never  masters  de- 
tails, but  he  is  never  mastered  bj  them,  simply 
because  he  leaves  them  alone,  dexterously  dodging 
them  and  slipping  by  on  the  other  side. 

In  this  fact  is  the  secret  of  some  portion  of  Lord 
Beaconsfield' s  success  as  a  ministerial  leader,  and  of 
Mr.  Gladstone's  partial  failure.  Mr.  Gladstone  has, 
almost  always  apparently,  known  a  great  deal  more 
about  the  business  of  every  department  than  the  head 
of  it  did,  and  has  been  more  intimately  acquainted  with 
every  bill  than  the  ministerial  colleague  who  has  had 
charge  of  it.  He  hears  a  blundering  exposition,  or  a 
lame  defence,  with  the  intellectual  impatience  of  a 
master  who  sees  a  good  cause  weakened,  or  a  bad 
cause  made  gratuitously  worse  instead  of  better,  in 
the  handling.  He  interposes,  usually  very  effectually, 
so  far  as  the  mere  argument  is  concerned,  to  set 
matters  right.  The  result  is  sometimes  to  raise  a 
secondary  or  third-rate  question  into  primary  im- 
portance, to  make  a  small  ministerial  crisis  out  of  the 
ordinary  incidents  of  legislation  and  debate,  and  to 
decide  by  convincing  arguments  issues  which  might 
reasonably  have  been  left  to  a  conclusive  majority. 
Having  the  better  cause,  Mr.  Gladstone  cannot  bear 


158  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

to  seem  to  have  the  worse.  It  wounds  him  that  good 
arguments  which  his  colleagues  have  not  known  how 
to  employ  should  be  allowed  to  rust  unused.  His 
colleagues,  who  do  not  know  that  their  arguments 
are  bad,  and  who  think  probably  that  they  have  made 
out  an  unanswerable  case,  do  not  like  to  see  the 
honour  of  victory  snatched  out  of  their  hands.  They 
are  prone  to  believe  that  they  have  persuaded  the 
majority  which  was  created  for  them  beforehand. 
This  is  an  innocent  illusion,  at  which  it  would  have 
been  charitable  to  wink.  The  too  ruthless  destruc- 
tion of  it  has  done  something  to  prevent  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's having  any  devoted  personal  following  in 
Parliament,  or  even  any  very  strong  political  friend- 
ships on  the  front  Liberal  bench.  Lord  Beacons- 
field  has  never  in  this  way  unconsciously  wounded 
the  self-love  of  the  people  who  sit  about  him.  He 
has  been  patient  of  bad  arguments  when  he  has  had 
a  good  majority,  and  he  has  been  willing  to  leave  his 
lieutenants  masters  of  the  field  and  with  the  honours 
of  victory.  If  a  colleague  has  got  into  a  scrape,  from 
which  a  division  will  extricate  him,  he  has  been  con- 
tent to  let  him  fight  his  way  out  of  it  without  tender- 
ing humiliating  and  distasteful  assistance  ;  thus  saving 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD.  159 

the  complacency  of  a  friend,  and  not  too  closely 
associating  the  ministry  as  a  whole,  in  the  person  of 
its  chief,  with  the  blunder  of  a  department. 

Lord  Beaconsfield  has  said  that  a  ministerial  leader 
ought  to  be  reluctant  to  speak,  and,  if  such  a  happy 
gift  could  be  hoped  for,  unable  to  speak.  He  him- 
self can  always  intervene  when  it  is  necessary,  rather 
indeed  to  divert  the  attention  of  the  House  by  badi- 
nage or  invective  from  strong  arguments,  than  to  con- 
vert them  by  arguments  yet  stronger.  But  he  is 
never  tempted  to  speak  by  his  superior  knowledge 
of  the  subject  in  debate,  or  by  that  excessive  facility 
in  giving  rhetorical  form  to  the  suggestions  and  im- 
pulses of  the  moment,  which  is  often  as  fatal  to  the 
highest  eloquence  as  it'  is  dangerous  in  parliamentary 
management.  Oratory,  after  all,  is  an  instrumental 
art ;  and  in  the  English  House  of  Commons,  as  it  is 
now  constituted,  it  is  a  means  for  the  conduct  of 
public  business.  Probably  no  one  has  ever  used  it 
so  effectively  for  this  purpose  as  Mr.  Gladstone. 
Tn°;  growing  perplexity  of  public  affairs,  in  which 
every  question  is  involved  in  a  web  of  tangled  de- 
tails, demanded,  and,  perhaps,  in  a  certain  degree 
created,  at  any  rate  it  stimulated  and  developed,  that 


l6o  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

particular  type  of  statesmanship  and  of  eloquence 
of  which  Mr.  Gladstone  is  a  master.  He  is  at  his 
strongest  and  best  as  a  legislator  in  arranging  compli- 
cated details  into  an  orderly  whole — as  in  his  greater 
budgets  and  in  the  Irish  Church  and  Land  Bills  ;  and 
his  eloquence  reflects  his  statesmanship  in  his  power 
of  lucid  exposition  and  arrangement  of  facts  and  topics 
which  probably  no  other  man  could  carry  in  his  head, 
or  bring  out  in  perfect  order  and  completeness  in 
speech.  Mr.  Gladstone's  easy  movement  through  a 
crowd  and  crush  of  embarrassing  topics,  his  copious, 
unfaltering,  and  unstrained  speech,  mark  the  man 
who  is  at  home  with  every  branch  of  his  subject — 
who  knows  the  smallest  minutiae  of  it,  in  themselves, 
in  their  relation  to  each  other,  and  to  the  whole. 
In  the  laboured  and  stilted  English  of  what  should  be 
the  level  parts  of  Lord  Beaconsfield's  speeches — 
the  Johnsonese  vocabulary  and  the  Holofernian  dic- 
tion— you  see  traces  of  a  man  labouring  in  matters 
with  which  he  is  not  familiar.  The  pedestrian  speech 
of  Lord  Beaconsfield  does  not  suggest  easy  advance 
upon  a  smooth  and  fair  high  road,  but  a  toilsome 
stumbling  up  a  rough  and  barren  hillside.  The 
dreariness  of  the  way  is  relieved  by  piquant  para- 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  l6l 

doxes  and  pungent  personal  satire,  and  the  expec- 
tation of  these  keeps  attention  alive,  or  stimulates 
it  when  it  is  flagging.  Lord  Beacon sfield's  repu- 
tation as  an  orator  will  depend  in  the  future,  as 
it  does  now,  on  isolated  sentences  or  short  passages 
admitting  of  separation  from  the  speeches  in  which 
they  are  found,  because  they  have  in  reality  no  vital 
connection  with  them.  They  are  ornaments  stuck 
on  or  purple  patches  let  into  a  sometimes  thread- 
bare robe.  Lord  Beaconsfield's  oratorical  ability 
will  probably  in  future  be  rated  higher  than  it  de- 
serves, because  of  this  facility  of  detachment.  He 
has  converted  his  intellectual  wealth  into  portable 
property,  as  peasants  abroad  invest  their  savings  in 
golden  ear-rings  and  bracelets,  or  as  Eastern  mer- 
chants carry  theirs  in  diamonds  and  precious  stones. 
Mr.  Gladstone's  eloquence  will  be  to  future  genera- 
tions rather  a  tradition  of  parliamentary  history  than 
a  continued  life.  It  is  not  to  be  judged  by  extracts. 
Each  part  of  his  speech  depends  on  the  whole,  and 
each  speech,  we  may  almost  say,  on  the  discussion 
of  which  it  formed  usually  the  most  important  ele- 
ment. Mr.  Gladstone's  oratory  is  that  of  the  man 

of  affairs,  the  statesman,  in  the  true  sense  of  the  term, 
ii 


1 62  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

and  is  imbedded  in  the  public  business  of  the  time. 
Lord  Bcaconsfield's  oratory  consists  of  the  sallies  of 
a  fashionable  entertainer,  and  his  cleverer  hits  and 
repartees  may  have  a  sort  of  jest-book  immortality, 
along  with  the  best  things  of  Foote  and  Theodore 
Hook.  Nothing  can  be  better  than  his  nicknames. 
There  is  something  of  genius  in  them.  The  "  su- 
perior person" — the  "inspired  schoolboy" — and  the 
"extinct  volcanoes,"  of  the  Liberal  front  bench,  have 
been  named  and  labelled  once  for  all.  The  House 
of  Commons  misses  these  things,  and  such  stories  as 
that  of  the  Irish  deputation  who  waited  upon  Lord 
Beaconsfield,  and  after  a  very  agreeable  and  cordial 
interview,  went  away  without  telling  him  what  they 
had  come  for.  His  withdrawal  has  eclipsed  its  gaiety. 
Lord  Beaconsfield  has  found  it  easier  to  communi- 
cate some  of  his  least  desirable  moral  qualities  to  his 
colleagues  in  both  Houses,  than  his  intellectual  vi- 
vacity. There  are  traces  of  the  master  in  the  disin- 
genuousness  with  which  Sir  Stafford  Northcote  and 
Lord  Salisbury  have  learned  to  answer  questions, 
using  words  formally  true  to  convey  a  misleading 
impression. 

The  year  which  saw  Lord  Beaconsfield  for  the  first 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  163 

time  a  minister  of  the  Crown  was  otherwise  even 
more  memorable.  By  a  curious  coincidence  it  wit- 
nessed the  the  death  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  and 
the  restoration  of  the  French  empire  under  Napoleon 
III.  It  fell  to  Lord  Beaconsfield,  on  behalf  of  her 
Majesty's  Government,  to  announce  in  the  House  of 
Commons  the  Queen's  recognition,  as  Emperor  of 
the  French,  of  the  friend  and  fellow-adventurer  who 
had  been  enigmatically  silent,  and  daringly  paradoxi- 
cal with  him  at  Gore  House.  The  era  of  blunder 
and  swagger  and  national  Chauvinism,  of  tawdry  and 
flashy  Government,  which  Napoleon  III.  introduced 
in  France,  Lord  Beaconsfield  more  than  twenty  years 
afterwards  was  to  initiate  in  England.  Lord  Bea- 
consfield has  consciously  imitated  Napoleon  III. 
and  the  Second  Empire  in  his  methods  of  govern, 
ment ;  but  for  a  long  time  he  unconsciously  pro- 
duced a  nearer  resemblance  to  Soulouque  II.  and 
the  Empire  of  Hayti.  The  French  Empire  was  a 
powerful  though  pestilent  reality.  Lord  Beacons- 
field,  until  he  devised  the  British  protectorate  of 
Asiatic  Turkey,  was  unable  to  commit  the  country 
to  anything  more  than  whimsical  and  irritating  ex- 
travagancies. He  has  abundantly  made  up  for  post- 


164  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

poned  opportunity.  On  the  very  day  on  which  the 
Hous~  of  Commons  heard  the  ministerial  statement 
oi  th:  recognition  of  Napoleon,  it,  with  a  sort  of 
ironical  appropriateness,  voted  a  large  sum  of  money 
for  the  solemn  interment  of  the  Duke  of  Wellington. 
It  buried  one  era  before  entering  upon  another;  and 
Lord  Beaconsfield  was  the  man  to  officiate  at  both 
ceremonies.  It  fell  to  him,  in  the  name  of  the  Com- 
mons of  England,  to  pronounce  the  national  farewell 
to  its  great  hero.  How  he  did  it,  it  is  almost  super- 
fluous to  say.  Lord  Beaconsfield  could  not  find 
words  of  his  own  suitable  to  the  occasion,  and  he 
availed  himself  of  the  language  in  which  M.  Thiers 
had  commended  the  services  of  some  second-rate 
French  marshal ;  without,  however,  mentioning  either 
M.  Thiers  or  the  French  marshal. 

That  Lord  Beaconsfield  was  not  lifted  into  sincer- 
ity when  he  assumed  to  speak  of  the  dead  Duke  of 
Wellington  in  the  name  of  the  Commons  of  Eng'and, 
gives  a  glimpse  of  the  way  in  which  use  and  habit 
may  degrade  a  nature  not  originally  without  generos- 
ity and  sensibility.  Perhaps,  .however,  Lord  Beacons- 
field  did  not  think  that  the  Duke  of  Wellington 
deserved  more  than  the  second-hand  praises  in  which 


LORb    BEACONSFIELD.  1 65 

a  second-rate  French  marshal  had  been  posthu- 
mously dressed  out.  His  estimate  of  the  Duke  and 
of  what  he  calls  Dukism,  has  been  given  in  one  of 
his  writings,  and  it  is  by  no  means  of  a  very  exalted 
order. 

Lord  Derby's  first  ministry  purchased  a  few  weeks' 
tenure  of  office  after  the  general  election  of  1852,  by 
accepting  the  resolution  which  pledged  them  to  the 
theory  and  practice  of  free  trade.  But  Lord  Beacons- 
field's  first  budget  was  more  than  even  the  contemp- 
tuous indulgence  of  the  House  of  Commons  could 
bear.  The  coalition  ministry  of  Lord  Aberdeen, 
which  brought  Whigs,  Peelites,  and  Radicals  into  the 
same  Cabinet  and  the  same  party,  followed.  The 
history  of  the  next  two-and-twenty  years  is,  with  little 
interruption,  the  history  of  Liberal  government  in 
England,  with  which  Lord  Beaconsfield  had  nothing 
to  do  except  as  a  sharp,  but  unavailing  critic.  His 
political  adventures  may  be  said  to  cease  for  a  time 
at  this  point ;  for  henceforth  he  acted  for  and  with  his 
party,  and  they  share  with  him  the  responsibility  for  the 
things  said  and  done  in  their  name.  The  much-vaunted 
chivalry  of  the  late  Lord  Derby  had  its  full  share  in 
the  exploits  of  the  politician  with  whom  he  entered 


1 66  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

into  partnership,  and  whom  he  designated  as  his  suc- 
cessor when  broken  health  dictated  his  retirement 
from  office.  Through  the  greater  part  of  a  quarter 
of  a  century  Lord  Beaconsfield  was  the  patient  and 
wary  leader  of  the  Opposition.  In  debate  he  was  a 
sort  of  railing  and  vituperative  chorus  in  a  drama  the 
action  of  which  was  carried  on  by  others  than  himself. 
The  six  years  which  intervened  between  Lord  Bea- 
consfield's  first  and  second  tenure  of  office,  derive 
their  historic  importance  from  the  financial  measures 
of  Mr.  Gladstone,  from  the  Crimean  War,  from  the 
establishment  of  relations  of  friendship  with  France 
(which  has  outlasted  and,  it  is  reasonable  to  hope, 
will  outlast  the  unworthy  instrument  and  motives  in 
which  it  originated),  and  the  Indian  mutiny.  Lord 
Beaconsfield  renewed  against  Lord  Aberdeen,  though 
with  more  reserve  and  with  some  sense  of  his  own 
changed  position  and  ex-official  dignity,  the  bitter 
and  unscrupulous  attacks  which  he  had  made  some 
years  before  on  Sir  Robert  Peel.  He  opposed  with 
epigrams  the  development  of  that  free-trade  policy 
which  he  and  his  party,  by  their  own  votes  and 
speeches,  on  Mr.  Villiers's  resolution  in  1852,  were 
pledged  to  carry  out.  He  subjected  himself,  by  his 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  167 

criticisms  on  the  diplomatic  conduct  by  the  Govern- 
ment of  the  Eastern  Question,  to  the  imputation  of 
factious  and  unpatriotic  motives,  which  during  the 
past  two  years  have  been  flung  at  the  head  of  Mr. 
Gladston  e ;  and  when  the  Indian  mutiny  broke  out, 
he  answered  the  question  "  Ought  India  to  be  con- 
tent?" in  a  manner  which  might  have  subjected  him 
to  the  threat  of  a  vote  of  personal  censure,  if  any 
Liberal  Mr.  Hanbury  had  at  that  time  sat  on  the 
Ministerial  side  of  the  House.  It  is  curious  that  in 
the  debate  in  1854,  on  the  unconstitutional  interfe- 
rence attributed  to  the  Prince  Consort,  Lord  Beacons- 
field,  though  as  leader  of  the  Opposition  he  might 
naturally,  and  it  would  have  been  thought  must  ne- 
cessarily, have  spoken,  left  it  to  Mr.  Walpole  to  ex- 
press the  concurrence  of  the  Conservative  party  in 
the  doubtful  doctrines  laid  down  by  Lord  John  Rus- 
sell. In  1852,  when  Lord  Palmerston  was  dismissed 
from  office,  Lord  Beaconsfield  had  strongly  censured 
the  frequent  and  improper  introduction  by  Lord  John 
Russell  of  the  Queen's  name  into  the  controversy. 
In  so  doing,  he  was  consistent  with  his  vindication, 
many  years  before,  of  Sir  Robert  Peel's  conduct  in 
the  Bed-chamber  affair ;  but  he  was  inconsistent  with 


1 68  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

the  general  tone  of  both  his  earlier  and  his  later 
writings  on  the  functions  and  power  cf  the  Sovereign 
in  the  constitution,  and  with  his  own  practice  since 
he  has  held  the  office  of  Prime  Minister. 

Defeated  in  1857  on  the  Conspiracy  Bill,  Lord 
Palmerston,  who  in  1855  nad  succeeded  Lord  Aber- 
deen, resigned,  and  Lord  Derby  and  Lord  Beacons- 
field  returned  to  office.  The  attempt  to  govern  by  a 
minority  in  the  House  of  Commons,  which  Sir  Robert 
Peel  had  made  in  1834,  and  which  Lord  Derby  had 
repeated  in  1852,  was  now  renewed,  with  no  more 
success  than  it  deserved.  The  only  measure  of  im- 
portance passed  by  the  administration  was  the  Act 
for  the  transfer  of  the  government  of  India  from  the 
East  India  Company  to  the  Crown.  The  confusion 
of  bills  and  resolutions,  and  of  bills  No.  i,  No.  2,  and 
No.  3,  had  scarcely  any  precedent  in  legislation ;  and 
it  had  no  parallel  until  Lord  Derby  and  Lord  Bea- 
consfield  had  to  deal  with  the  Reform  question  in 
1867.  The  fantastic  scheme  of  the  Government, 
which  apparently  proceeded  from  the  same  curiously 
constructed  intellect  as  Lord  Beaconsfield's  only 
original  budget,  and  as  the  first  Reform  Bill  of  i867> 
was  transformed  into  a  reasonable  and  possible  rneas« 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  169 

ure  by  the  Opposition,  and  accepted  ty  the  Govern- 
ment and  the  nation  at  their  hands. 

In  the  meantime,  since  the  conclusion  of  the  Cri- 
mean War,  and  the  signature  in  1856  of  the  Treaty 
of  Paris,  home  questions  had  begun  to  reassume 
their  importance.  England  returning  from  her  per- 
haps Quixotic  enterprises  abroad,  had  begun  to  see 
the  necessity  of  cultivating  her  own  fields  ;  and  it 
was  doubtful  whether  the  instruments  in  her  hand 
afforded  the  best  means  of  doing  so.  The  political 
machinery  needed  improving.  In  other  words,  par- 
liamentary reform  was  a  necessity  which  politicians  of 
all  parties,  Liberal  and  Conservative,  Radical,  Whig, 
and  Tory,  had  to  confront.  The  Act  of  1832  had 
ceased  to  be  in  harmony  with  the  England  in  which  in 
1858  men  had  for  some  time  been  living.  Those  in- 
genious writers  who  are  always  engaged  in  a  lively 
protest  alike  against  Radical  reforms,  and  Whig  or 
doctrinaire  tampering  with  the  constitution,  and  who 
demand  a  settlement  which  shall  last,  fail  to  under- 
stand not  only  the  world,  but  in  a  more  conspicuous 
degree  still  the  country  in  which  they  live.  In 
China,  political  ingenuity  has  succeeded  in  producing 
a  settlement  which  has,  in  its  main  features,  lasted 


170  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

for  some  thousands  of  years  ;  but  even  the  Chinese, 
appropriately  worshipping  their  ancestors,  have  not 
absolutely  succeeded.  Death,  in  truth,  is  the  only 
settlement  which  lasts.  One  of  our  Chinese  politi- 
cians represented  Lord  John  Russell  as  arguing  :  "  I 
was  very  hungry  ;  I  had  a  hearty  dinner  which  did 
me  good,  and  I  must,  therefore,  now  dine  again." 
This  philosopher  apparently  considered  that  one  din- 
ner in  a  lifetime  ought  to  satisfy  any  one  ;  and  that 
having  dined  to-day  it  would  be  absurd  and  a  wanton 
tampering  with  one's  constitution  to  think  of  dining 
to-morrow.  The  languid  Administration  of  Lord 
John  Russell  owed  its  feebleness  in  some  degree  to 
the  inefficiency  of  the  men  of  whom  it  was  composed, 
but  in  a  greater  degree  to  the  fact  that  the  constitu- 
encies which  the  Act  of  1832  had  created,  no  longer 
represented  the  country.  Between  the  industrial 
England  and  the  social  England  of  that  day  a  great 
and  wide  gulf  had  arisen.  The  Chartist  movement  of 
1848  was  a  symptom  of  that  divergence.  That  was 
an  inarticulate  outburst  which  lacked  reasonable  guid- 
ance and  interpretation.  The  handful  of  men  in 
Parliament  who  perceived  the  real  state  of  affairs, 
and  endeavoured  to  discover  and  apply  a  timely  rem- 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  I?! 

edy,  were  described  as  factious  innovators,  bent  on 
revolution  and  destruction  for  the  pleasure  of  the 
thing.  The  respectable  Mr.  Hume  was  denounced 
by  the  Liberal  leader  of  the  day  as  a  chartered  liber- 
tine. The  fact  is  that  the  men  who  were  bent  upon 
improvement  were  the  first  to  perceive  the  insuffici- 
ency of  the  parliamentary  machinery  for  accomplish- 
ing it.  Even  to  the  last  the  men  who  were  the  unwill- 
ing and  humiliated  instruments  of  the  enfranchisement 
of  1867,  proclaimed  that  the  necessity  which  they 
obeyed  was  entirely  factitious  in  its  origin,  the  result 
of  party  manoeuvres  and  personal  ambitions,  and  not 
the  expression  of  any  real  demand  on  the  part  of 
the  country.  The  Reform  Bills  unsuccessfully  in- 
troduced by  Lord  John  Russell,  during  his  own  Ad- 
ministration and  that  of  Lord  Aberdeen,  were  rather 
attempts  to  abate  what  was  considered  a  nuisance 
within  the  walls  of  Parliament,  and  to  buy  off  Mr. 
Hume  and  Mr.  Bright,  than  dictated  by  a  sense  of 
political  justice  and  expediency  in  any  large  sense. 
The  same  may  be  said  of  the  Bill  brought  forward  by 
Lord  Beaconsfield  in  1859.  It  was  argued,  almost 
in  so  many  words,  that  the  popular  indifference  gave 
a  good  opportunity  of  effecting  ostensible  changes 


172  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

which  should  in  reality  change  nothing.  Lord  Beacons- 
field's  Reform  Bill  did  change  something.  It  changed 
the  Government.  It  is  unnecessary  to  describe  the 
fantastic  provisions  of  that  ludicrous  scheme,  which 
was  destroyed  by  its  own  absurdities  and  eccentrici- 
ties. Lord  Beaconsfield  has  always  denounced  the 
the  Reform  Act  of  1832  as  a  retrogressive  and  anti- 
democratic measure.  His  idea  of  Tory  democracy 
is  government  by  the  Crown  or  the  aristocracy  through 
the  residuum,  to  use  the  phrase  which  Mr.  Bright  in- 
troduced into  our  political  vocabulary.  The  old  free- 
men were  precisely  such  a  residuum  as  he  needed. 
It  is  true  that  during  the  whole  of  the  agitation,  in 
and  out  of  Parliament,  he  deprecated  what  he  called 
the  degradation  of  the  franchise,  and  argued  for  its 
lateral  as  opposed  to  its  vertical  extension.  But 
when  Lord  Salisbury,  then  sitting  in  the  House  of 
Commons  as  Lord  Cran borne,  denounced  the  incon- 
sistency of  these  professions  with  the  Reform  Bill  of 
1867,  in  its  final  shape,  Lord  Beaconsfield  appealed 
to  the  fact,  which  he  challenged  his  antagonist  to 
verify  by  reference  to  still  living  witnesses,  that  in 
the  deliberations  of  successive  cabinets  he  had  always 
advocated  a  household  qualification  as  the  only  solid 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  173 

ground  on  which  the  franchise  could  rest.  Lord  Bea- 
consfield  is  occasionally  in  the  habit  of  making  strong 
statements  based  on  what  turns  out  afterwards  to  be 
an  imperfect  recollection.  But  there  is  no  improba- 
bility in  this  assertion.  If  a  man's  consistency  is  to 
be  judged  solely  by  comparing  the  beginning  and  the 
end  of  his  career,  Lord  Beaconsfield  might  be  ac- 
counted one  of  the  most  consistent  of  politicians. 
But  there  is  an  intervening  space,  occupying  the 
greater  part,  and  the  most  decisively  influential  part, 
of  his  career ;  and  that  cannot  be  left  out  of  the 
reckoning. 

The  charge  which  is  made  against  Lord  Beacons- 
field  is  that  for  long  periods  he  has  persistently  de- 
nied convictions  which  he  all  along  steadily  held.  It 
is  quite  probable  that  he  has  always  been  as  much  of 
a  free-trader  as  he  was  when,  more  than  fifty  years 
ago,  he  published  Popanilla,  a  work  the  very  exist- 
ence of  which  he  forgot,  as  we  pointed  out  in  a 
former  article,  when  he  wrote  the  preface  to  the  new 
edition  of  Lothair,  but  which  since  has  been  brought 
to  his  memory  and  included  in  the  most  recently 
issued  volume  of  his  collected  works.  Nevertheless, 
this  did  not  prevent  his  assailing  Sir  Robert  Peel  and 


174  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

assuming  the  leadership  of  the  Protectionist  party.  He 
ma}'  have  advocated  household  suffrage  in  the  Cabinet, 
but  he  denounced  it  in  "Parliament  as  involving  peril 
and  degradation.  His  Reform  Bill  of  1859,  which 
contained  no  provision  for  lowering  the  franchise  in 
boroughs,  was  defeated  on  a  resolution  of  Lord  John 
Russell's,  signalising  that  and  other  faults  in  the 
measure.  The  ministry  determined  on  dissolving. 
The  general  election  echoed  the  disapproval  of  Parlia- 
ment when  the  new  House  of  Commons  met.  A  mo- 
tion of  want  of  confidence  proposed  by  Lord  Harting- 
ton  was  carried,  and  Lord  Derby  and  his  colleagues 
resigned.  The  new  ministry,  with  Lord  Palmerston 
at  its  head,  brought  the  Whigs  and  Peelites  together 
once  more  in  the  same  Government,  Mr.  Milner 
Gibson  and  Mr.  Villiers  representing  the  Radical 
party  in  a  Cabinet  which  Mr.  Cobden  declined  to 
enter,  and  which  Mr.  Bright  was  not  invited  to  join. 

The  great  achievements  of  this  ministry  were  like 
those  of  the  Aberdeen  Cabinet,  the  financial  measures 
of  Mr.  Gladstone,  including  the  negotiation,  mainly 
through  Mr.  Cobden,  of  the  treaty  of  commerce  with 
France.  Out  of  doors  the  country  was  stirred  by  Mr. 
Bright' s  agitation  for  household  suffrage  and  a  redis- 


LORD   BEACONSFIELD.  1 75 

tribution  ;  and  divided  by  the  conflict  of  opinion  to 
which  the  American  civil  war  gave  rise.  Considering 
the  sentiments  of  his  party,  whose  passions  were  as 
fiercely  enlisted  on  the  side  of  the  slave-holders  as 
they  are  now  on  behalf  of  the  Turks,  Lord  Beacons- 
field's  reticence  is  deserving  of  credit.  He  probably 
had  some  sympathy  with  the  territorial  democracy  of 
the  North,  and  no  particular  liking  for  the  Southern 
oligarchy.  It  would  have  been  too  much  to  expect 
him  to  try  and  give  right  moral  guidance  to  his  party. 
It  is  to  his  credit  that  he  did  not  flatter  and  inflame 
their  prejudices  and  passions.  During  the  whole  of 
Lord  Palmerston's  administration,  it  was  Lord  Bea- 
consfield's  humour  to  affect  a  sort  of  patronage  of  the 
Prime  Minister,  to  represent  him  as  the  Conserva- 
tive chief  of  a  Liberal  government,  obeying  the  leader 
of  the  Opposition,  and  holding  in  check  his  own 
revolutionary  followers.  Though  the  Liberals  had 
place,  which  he  did  not  envy  them,  the  Tories  had 
power  ;  and  with  this  Lord  Beaconsfield's  noble  and 
generous  ambition  was  content.  It  was  reserved  for 
him  to  show  for  yet  the  third  time  that  place  without 
power  was  not  absolutely  unendurable,  and  that  a 
Conservative  ministry  in  a  minority  was  more  to  his 


176  POLITICAL  ADVENTURES    OF 

mind.  Lord  Palmerston's  death,  in  1865,  terminated 
the  period  of  rest  and  thankfulness.  Lord  Russoll 
succeeded  his  old  colleague,  of  whom  he  had  been 
alternately  leader  and  follower,  a  cordial  friend  and  an 
intimate  enemy  ;  and  with  his  return  to  the  Premier- 
ship, he  returned  to  his  first  love,  Reform.  That  was 
the  question  to  which  Lord  Russell's  character  and 
ambition,  his  convictions,  and  his  natural  desire, 
quickened  by  previous  failures,  to  complete  his  own 
great  measure,  gave  new  prominence.  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's assumption  of  the  leadership  of  the  Govern- 
ment and  the  Liberal  party  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, practically  made  the  ministry,  slight  as  were  the 
personal  changes  in  its  composition,  a  new  one,  and 
created  a  new'  Liberalism.  We  need  not  record  the 
intrigues,  and  the  secessions  into  the  cave  of  Adullam, 
which  defeated  the  Reform  Bill  of  1866,  and  the  Gov- 
ernment with  it,  and  once  more  recalled  Lord  Derby 
and  Mr.  Disraeli  to  office  ;  nor  the  chapter  of  acci- 
dents and  surprises  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  the 
agitation  and  threatened  tumult  out  of  doors,  which 
made  Lord  Derby  the  sponsor  of  household  suffrage, 
and  enabled  Lord  Beaconsfield  to  boast  that  after  all 
the  Tories  were,  as  he  had  always  declared,  the 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  I  77 

national  party,  whose  policy  was  that  of  trust  in  the 
people. 

In  spite  of  defeats  on  vital  questions  of  policy,  and 
notably  on  the  question  of  the  Disestablishment  of  the 
Irish  Church,  Mr.  Disraeli,  whom  Lord  Derby's  retire- 
ment had  elevated  to  the  Premiership,  persisted  in 
retaining  office,  and  keeping  in  his  own  hands  the  set- 
tlement of  the  Reform  question  by  those  Scotch  and 
Irish  Bills  which  were  the  necessary  accompaniment 
of  the  English  measure.  Nothing  but  a  direct  vote 
of  want  of  confidence  would  have  led  to  his  retire- 
ment. This  he  magniloquently  and  safely  challenged. 
Seeing  that  the  party  of  resistance  to  the  encroach- 
ments of  the  democracy,  and  to  the  degradation  of 
the  franchise,  were  prepared  to  concede  household 
suffrage,  it  would  have  been  folly  to  have  given  them 
the  opportunity,  pretty  certain  to  be  used,  of  resisting 
it  anew,  and  with  the  aid  of  the  Adullamites  success- 
fully ;  or  to  have  encountered  the  disturbances,  diffi- 
culties, and  uncertainties  of  a  dissolution.  It  was 
better  that  the  Whigs  should  be  dished,  than  that  a 
great  reform  should  be  marred  and  hindered.  Lord 
Beaconsfield  missed  an  opportunity  for  the  display  of 
that  generosity  which  he  would  have  shown  if  he  had 


178  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES   OF 

imitated  in  regard  to  Mr.  Bright  and  Parliamentary 
Reform,  the  language  in  which  Sir  Robert  Peel  spoke 
of  Mr.  Cobden  and  free  trade.  He  connected  his  own 
name,  though  nothing  else,  with  a  really  great  politi- 
cal measure,  and  kept  the  management  of  the  election 
of  1868  in  his  hands.  The  prediction  attributed  to 
him  of  the  immediate  entrance  of  a  Conservative  ad- 
ministration on  a  term  of  office  as  lasting  as  that  of 
Lord  Liverpool's  government,  did  not  make  in  1868 
the  first  step  towards  its  verification.  An  overwhelm- 
ing defeat  in  the  polling  booths  terminated,  by  a  sort 
of  national  vote  of  censure,  the  existence  of  an  inglo- 
rious and  apostate  administration.  Lord  Beacons- 
field  bowed  to  the  decision  of  the  country  without 
waiting  for  its  formal  ratification  in  the  House  of 
Commons  ;  and  Mr.  Gladstone  became  Prime  Minis- 
ter by  the  distinct  designation  of  the  newly  created 
constituencies.  The  great  measures  which  marked 
tae  course  of  the  new  Government  need  not  be  re- 
counted, nor  need  we  dwell  upon  the  great  errors 
which  weakened  its  strength,  culminating  in  the  error 
which  at  the  least  expedient  moment  led  to  Mr.  Glad- 
stone's appeal  to  the  country.  A  momentary  impulse 
on  the  part  of  the  Prime  Minister  coincided  with  a 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  179 

probably  only  temporary  mood  of  irritation  in  the 
nation,  and  the  dismissal  which  Mr.  Gladstone  had 
welcomed  in  advance,  and  had  almost  solicited,  was 
vouchsafed  him. 

Imitating  the  example  of  very  doubtful  constitu- 
tional expediency  set  by  Lord  Beaconsfield  in  1867, 
Mr.  Gladstone  in  the  beginning  of  1874  resigned 
without  waiting  for  a  formal  vote  of  want  of  confi- 
dence on  the  part  of  the  House  of  Commons.  It  is 
to  be  hoped  that  there  will  be  no  further  and  future 
imitation  of  this  double  precedent.  The  fiction  that 
the  House  of  Commons  is  a  freely  deliberating  assem- 
bly, judging  after  debate,  and  on  the  merits  of  the  ques- 
tion submitted  to  it,  is  a  convenient  and  healthy  one. 
It  is  vital  indeed  to  Parliamentary  rule.  Simply  to 
count  up  the  election  returns,  and  to  forecast  future 
votes  by  reference  to  party  organization  and  candida- 
ture, is  to  make  a  dangerous  approach  to  the  plebisci- 
tary  system  of  government.  It  is  desirable  that  a  min- 
istry, presumably  defeated  at  the  polling  booths,  should 
meet  the  House  of  Commons,  to  which  it  is  immedi- 
ately responsible,  and  should  keep  and  lay  down  office 
at  its  direct  bidding.  It  is  the  duty  of  the  head  of  a  gov- 
ernment, to  vindicate  its  measures  and  policy  before 


l8o  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

Parliament,  and  in  justifying  its  conduct  in  the  past, 
to  indicate  for  the  party  which  it  represents  the  prin- 
ciples by  which  it  will  be  guided,  and  the  application 
which  it  will  make  of  those  principles  in  the  future. 
Such  a  statement  by  Mr.  Gladstone,  at  the  opening 
of  the  session  of  1874,  in  the  only  place  in  which  he 
and  his  antagonists  could  meet  face  to  face,  would 
have  possessed  historic  value,  and  would  possibly 
have  had  an  effect  on  public  and  parliamentary 
opinion,  which  might  have  helped  to  restrain  some  of 
the  wilder  eccentricities  and  extravagances  of  his  suc- 
cessor. It  would  at  any  rate  have  been  a  dignified 
ending  to  a  great  ministerial  career. 

In  forming  his  Cabinet,  Lord  Beaconsfield  had  the 
good  sense  to  restrict  its  numbers,  even  below  the 
mystic  thirteen  which  used  to  be  its  outside  limit  be- 
fore it  reached  the  unwieldy  size  of  recent  govern- 
ments. Twelve  is  a  sacred  number  both  in  Hebrew 
and  English  history ;  and  to  this  number  the  Cabinet 
was  restricted  until  Lord  Sandon  became  its  thirteenth 
member  or  odd  man.  Before  this,  it  seemed  as  if 
Lord  Beaconsfield  held  the  old  superstition  that  it 
is  unlucky  to  sit  down  thirteen  at  a  table ;  and  the 
supposititious  thirteenth  member  of  the  Cabinet  no 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  l8l 

doubt  looked  upon  his  more  fortunate  brethren  much 
as  the  occupant  of  the  forty-first  arm-chair  in  the 
French  Academy  regards  the  favoured  forty  immor- 
tals. It  is  to  be  hoped  that  Lord  Beaconsfield's 
example  will  be  followed  when  the  next  Liberal 
Cabinet  is  formed.  It  will  require  some  courage  tc 
resist  the  claims  of  long-established  and  respectable 
failures.  The  want  of  homogeneity  in  the  Liberal 
party,  and  its  division  into  strongly  marked  sections 
of  opinion,  each  with  a  fair  title  to  representation  in 
the  Cabinet,  make  the  restriction  of  its  numbers  diffi- 
cult. But  if  it  is  to  retain  authority  and  efficiency, 
the  widening  and  weakening  process  to  which  it  has 
been  submitted  by  Liberal  Prime  Ministers  must  be 
checked.  It  is  easy  to  soothe  disappointed  ambition 
by  peerages  and  orders : 

"Nor  mean  the  gift  the  royal  grace  affords, 
All  shall  be  knights  save  those  that  shall  be  lords." 

The  upper  chamber  seems  to  have  been  providen- 
tially preserved  as  a  place  of  honourable  exile.  It  is 
much  better  than  the  Turkish  system,  which  sends  a 
discredited  Pacha  to  govern  a  remote  and  barbaous 
province.  Unfortunately,  Lord  Beaconsfield  doei 


182  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

not  confine  himself  to  the  distribution  of  titles  and 
ribbons,  which  seem  to  have  the  same  attraction  for 
English  politicians  as  strings  of  beads  and  painted 
glass  have  for  more  savage  chieftains.  Not  content 
with  a  wide  distribution  of  these  baubles,  Lord  Bea- 
consfield  offered  more  substantial  consolations  to 
the  wounded  feelings  of  disappointed  colleagues. 
The  appointments  of  Lord  Hampton  and  Sir  Sey- 
mour Fitzgerald  to  lucrative  commissionerships,  for 
which  neither  of  them  had  the  slightest  qualification, 
were  only  conspicuous  illustrations,  two  instances, 
among  many, — of  a  deliberate  return  to  the  worst 
abuses  of  patronage  as  it  was  exercised  before  the 
Reform  Bill.  Lord  Beaconsfield  exhibited,  in  the 
formation  of  his  ministry,  the  disposition,  which  he 
satirized  in  Vivian  Grey,  of  a  plebeian  Prime  Min- 
ister to  surround  himself  with  great  nobles  and  social 
magnates.  He  is  his  own  Mr.  Beckendorff.  The 
attitude  of  the  English  aristocracy  towards  him  dis- 
plays, in  return,  that  fidelity  which  he  says,  in  his 
Life  of  Lord  George  Bentinck,  that  great  nobles  are 
always  ready  to  show  to  a  chief  not  of  their  own  order. 
Lord  Beaconsfield's  subsequent  experience  has  proba- 
bly verified  his  statement.  One  instance  is  at  the 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  183 

rery  moment  very  conspicuous.  It  is  no  secret  that 
Lord  Beaconsfield  had  great  difficulty  in  inducing 
some  eminent  politicians,  on  whose  assistance  he  set 
the  highest  value,  to  take  office — not,  as  on  previous 
occasions,  with  him,  but  distinctly  under  him.  Lord 
Salisbury,  in  particular,  it  is  believed,  was  captured 
with  the  utmost  difficulty,  and,  for  some  time,  seemed 
to  be  but  imperfectly  tamed.  Now  he  has  been 
completely  subdued. 

Though  not  Prime  Minister  for  the  first  time  in 
1874,  Lord  Beaconsfield  was  then  for  the  first  time 
Prime  Minister  with  a  working  and  thoroughly  disci- 
plined and  docile  majority  in  both  Houses,  and  with 
the  support,  sometimes  ostentatiously  vaunted,  at 
other  times  significantly  hinted,  of  the  Crown  and  the 
Court.  Since  the  fall  of  Sir  Robert  Peel's  adminis- 
tration, in  1846,  no  Government  had  had  the  same 
combination  of  advantages.  Lord  Beaconsfield  had 
previously  shown  the  greatest  skill  as  a  leader  of  op- 
position and  of  Governments  which,  without  any  vio- 
lent straining  of  words,  may  be  said  to  have  been 
practically  in  opposition  since  they  were  confronted 
by  a  hostile  majority  in  the  House  of  Commons.  He 
had  proved  himself  to  be  a  master  of  the  arts  of  delay 


184  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

and  of  evasion,  skilful  in  playing  off  one  section  of  his 
opponents  against  another.  Under  LorJ  Derby's  suc- 
cessive governments  and  his  own  first  administra- 
tion, barren  sessions  and  insufficient  work  were  ex- 
cused as  the  inevitable  consequences  of  their  position. 
It  had  now  to  be  seen  whether,  with  all  the  instru- 
ments in  his  hand  which  Sir  Robert  Peel  had  used  with 
such  benefit  to  the  public,  and  which  no  minister  since 
Sir  Robert  Peel  had  possessed,  he  could  transact  the 
business  of  the  country,  or  even  conduct  business  in 
the  House.  In  Mr.  Cross  he  had  probably  the  best 
Home  Secretary  since  Sir  George  Lewis,  perhaps 
since  Sir  James  Graham.  The  Exchequer,  and  the 
Colonial  and  Indian  Offices,  were  filled  with  more 
than  usual  efficiency,  and,  under  any  other  Prime 
Minister  than  Lord  Beaconsfield  himself,  Lord  Derby 
would  probably  have  been-  a  sound  and  judicious  For- 
eign Secretary  of  the  Aberdeen  type.  Some  injustice 
has  possibly  been  done  to  Lord  Derby.  While  he  was 
in  office  the  world  saw  how  little  he  did.  Since  his 
retirement  from  the  Foreign  Secretaryship,  and  Lord 
Salisbury's  appointment,  it  has  had  means  of  knowing 
how  much  he  may  have  hindered.  Lord  Cairns  may 
claim  a  place  among  the  great  Chancellors  and  polit- 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  18$ 

ical  lawyers.  In  spite  of  these  aids,  Lord  Beacons- 
field's  conduct  of  business  in  the  House  of  Commons 
during  the  sessions  of  1874,  1875,  and  1876,  was  a 
failure.  He  has  never,  as  we  have  said,  been  a  mas- 
ter of  details,  he  has  never  been  interested  in  them, 
he  has  seldom  taken  the  pains  to  acquaint  himself 
with  them,  and  all  the  pains  and  skill  of  the  able  man 
of  business  who  was  at  that  time  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury,  and  who  has  since  been  deservedly  pro- 
moted to  one  of  the  great  offices  of  State,  were  un- 
able to  prevent  his  erratic  leader  from  traversing  and 
overthrowing  the  careful  and  difficult  arrangements 
which  had  been  minutely  concerted  beforehand. 
Lord  Beaconsfield's  tact  and  skill  in  dealing  with  per- 
sons, his  knowledge  of  the  feelings  of  the  House  and 
of  its  different  sections,  his  powers  of  adroit  flattery 
and  delicate  irony,  amusing  and  stingless  when  he 
chooses  that  it  shall  be  so,  would  probably  have  pre- 
vented the  scenes  of  anarchy  and  confusion  which 
have  marred  the  consideration  and  repute  of  the 
House  of  Commons  during  the  present  and  previous 
session  of  Parliament.  The  Irish  obstructives  have 
been  able  to  obstruct  because  the  leader  of  the 
House  of  Commons  has  been  helpless,  and  its  presid- 


1 86  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

ing  officers  have  been,  capriciously  and  in  turn,  per- 
emptory and  lax.  But  Lord  Beaconsfield  did  not 
conduct  public  business  in  the  House,  and  scarcely 
affected  to  do  so.  The  failure  was  due,  in  a  consid- 
erable degree,  no  doubt,  to  the  declining  health  and 
strength  which  led  him  to  retire  from  it.  It  was  also 
owing  largely  to  the  fact  that  Lord  Beaconsfield  evi- 
dently considered  the  office  of  Prime  Minister  as 
chiefly  desirable  because  it  enabled  him  to  exercise  a 
paramount  control  over  foreign  affairs,  and  to  devote 
himself  to  those  considerations  of  high  imperial  pol- 
icy as  he  regards  them,  in  which  for  four  or  five  years 
he  has  been  absorbed.  One  of  his  political  heroes  is 
Lord  Carteret,  who  anticipated  the  present  leader 
of  the  Liberal  party  in  the  title  of  Earl  Granville. 
"What  is  it  to  me,"  said  Carteret,  when  some  one 
came  to  him  about  business  which  he  thought  beneath 
him,  "  who  is  a  judge  or  who  is  a  bishop  ?  It  is  my 
business  to  make  kings  and  emperors,  and  to  main- 
tain the  balance  of  Europe."  This  seems  to  be  Lord 
Beaconsfield's  idea  of  a  Prime  Minister's  office. 

The  history  of  Lord  Beaconsfield's  second  adminis- 
tration is  the  history  of  the  Eastern  Question.  In  re- 
gard to  it,  his  statesmanship  seems  the  product  rather 


LORD    BEACONSHELD.  187 

of  an  erratic  Oriental  imagination  than  of  a  European 
intelligence.  He  has  introduced  the  wild  dreams 
and  projects  of  his  Eastern  heroes  into  the  practical 
politics  of  the  West.  Years  ago  he  published  a  pro- 
phetic burlesque  of  his  own  present  policy,  with  the 
fantastic  exaggerations  which  are  habitual  to  him,  bat 
which  are  not  incompatible  with  his  own  deep-seated 
belief  that  there  is  truth  beneath  the  extravagance. 
The  only  difference  between  the  scheme  to  which 
Lord  Beacorsfield  has  given  effect,  and  that  which 
the  Emir  Fakredeen  propounded  to  Tancred  is  the 
difference  between  reality  and  bold  caricature : — 
"  The  Queen  will  listen  to  what  you  say,  especially  if 
you  speak  to  her  as  you  speak  to  me,  and  say  such 
fine  things  in  such  a  beautiful  voice.  Nobody  ever 
opened  my  mind  like  you.  You  will  magnetize  the 
Queen  as  you  have  magnetized  me.  Go  back  to 

England  and  arrange  this You  must  perform 

the  Portuguese  scheme  on  a  great  scale  ;  quit  a  petty 
and  exhausted  position  for  a  vast  and  prolific  empire. 
Let  the  Queen  of  the  English  collect  a  great  fleet,  let 
her  stow  away  all  her  treasure,  bullion,  gold  plate, 
and  precious  arms,  be  accompanied  by  all  her  court 
and  chief  people,  and  transfer  the  seat  of  her  Empire 


1 88  POLITICAL  ADVENTURES    OF 

from  London  to  Delhi.  There  she  will  find  an  im- 
mense empire  ready-made,  a  first-rate  army,  and  a 
large  revenue We  acknowledge  the  Em- 
press of  India  as  our  suzerain,  and  secure  for  her  the 
Levantine  Coast.  If  she  likes  she  shall  have  Alexan- 
dria as  she  now  has  Malta ;  it  could  be  arranged. 
You  see  !  the  greatest  empire  that  ever  ex- 
isted ;  besides  which  she  gets  rid  of  the  embarrass- 
ment of  her  Chambers  !  And  quite  practicable  ;  for 
the  only  difficult  part,  the  conquest  of  India,  which 
baffled  Alexander,  is  all  done."  Lord  Beaconsfield  is 
probably  never  so  sincere  as  when  he  is  talking  non- 
sense, conscious  that  there  is  some  nonsense  in  what 
he  is  saying,  but  believing  that  there  is  at  bottom  a 
great  deal  more  truth.  The  secret  of  some  of  his 
wildest  freaks  of  policy  is  to  be  found  in  the  most  gro- 
tesque passages  of  his  old  novels.  There  lie  the 
ideas  which,  after  a  half  or  a  quarter  of  a  century's 
patient  waiting,  he  endeavours  to  carry  out.  Already 
the  Emir  Beaconsfield  has  given  effect  to  a  large  part 
of  the  scheme  of  the  Emir  Fakredeen.  We  have  an 
Empress  of  India.  The  convention  with  Turkey 
gives  England  the  protectorate  and  the  reversion  of 
the  sovereignty  of  the  Levant,  and,  indeed,  of  the 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  189 

whole  of  Asiatic  Turkey.  Negotiations  were  at  one 
time  in  progress  which  would  have  given  us  Alexan- 
dria, as  we  now  have  Malta.  To  avoid  wounding 
French  susceptibilities,  we  have  taken  Cyprus  in- 
stead. The  capital  of  the  empire  has  not  yet  been 
transferred  from  London  to  Delhi;  but  Indian  troops 
have  been  summoned  to  fight  our  battles  in  Europe, 
and  the  first  step  has  been  taken  towards  making 
England,  in  a  military  sense,  dependent  upon  what 
used  to  be  her  dependency  of  India.  Above  all,  the 
Emir  Beaconsfield  has  done  something  to  get  rid  of 
the  embarrassment  of  the  English  Chambers,  and  the 
Chambers  have  acquiesced  in  a  series  of  unconstitu- 
tional invasions  and  evasions  of  their  legitimate  au- 
thority, which,  if  the  precedents  now  set  were  fol- 
lowed, would  seriously  limit  the  scope  and  efficiency 
of  parliamentary  control. 

If  Lord  Beaconsfield  were  anything  more  than  a 
grotesque  foreign  accident  in  our  English  political 
history — if,  in  the  nature  of  things,  he  could  have 
successors — the  situation,  not  without  danger  as  it  is, 
but  still  more  ridiculous  and  annoying  than  danger- 
ous, would  be  fraught  with  grave  peril.  Lord  Bea- 
consfield's  peculiar  genius  was  under  restraint,  when 


I QO  POLITICAL   ADVENTURES    OF 

he  held  only  the  second  place  in  Conservative  Gov- 
ernments and  the  Conservative  party,  and  when  he 
had  to  face  and  defer  to  a  critical  and  suspicious,  and 
occasionally  a  directly  hostile  parliamentary  majority. 
Since  the  beginning  of  1874,  ne  nas  been  delivered 
from  any  checks,  save  those  which,  at  particular  pe- 
riods, have  been  imposed  upon  him  by  the  roused 
feeling  of  the  country.  These,  however,  from  the 
very  nature  of  popular  impulses,  have  acted  only 
from  time  to  time.  Bowing  to  the  storm,  he  has  let 
it  pass,  and  when  it  has  gone  its  way,  has  resumed 
his  suspended,  but  never  abandoned,  purpose.  He 
has  known  how  to  appeal  to  the  blatant  and  bluster- 
ing Chauvinism  of  the  coarsest  and  least  educated 
part  of  every  class  in  the  community,  from  the  highest 
to  the  lowest.  The  noisiest  and  vulgarest  noblemen 
and  the  noisiest  and  vulgarest  mobsmen  have  been 
upon  his  side.  A  too  timid  parliamentary  Opposition 
has  not  exercised  even  such  imperfect  control  as 
would  have  been  possible  to  higher  courage  and 
steadier  persistence.  The  one  statesman  who  has  set 
himself,  in  defiance  of  insult  and  clamour,  to  oppose 
the  prevailing  madness,  has  addressed  a  wearied  and 
exhausted  condition  of  popular  intelligence  and  feel- 


LORD    BEACONSFIELD.  igi 

ing.  The  only  elements  of  resistance  in  the  Cabinet 
have  been  got  rid  of,  and  Lord  Beaconsfield  has 
found  himself  the  sole  Minister  as  completely  as  ever 
Walpole  was.  Lord  Salisbury  has  been  content  to 
walk  as  the  first  and  most  distinguished  captive  in  his 
triumphal  procession.  England  has  played,  during 
the  last  four  or  five  years,  that  part  in  the  affairs  of 
Europe  which  Lord  Beaconsfield  wished  that  it  should 
play,  and  it  closely  resembles  that  which  he  has  cho- 
sen for  himself.  It  has  been  reduced  into  swagger 
and  self-assertion,  a  determination  to  push  to  the 
front,  merely  for  the  sake  of  being  there  and  of  being 
pointed  to,  talked  of,  and  wondered  at.  The  nation 
has  been  dressed  up  in  the  tawdry  finery  of  titles 
borrowed  from  imperial  France  and  imperial  Hayti ; 
ridiculous  orders  for  women  have  been  invented  ;  the 
theatrical  mission  to  Berlin  has  been  devised ;  a  gro- 
tesque and  fantastic  imagination  has  been  allowed 
free  play.  M.  Jourdain,  habited  as  the  great  Marna- 
mouchi,  was  not  more  ridiculously  accoutred  than 
this  sober  and  historic  nation  now  is  with  Eastern 
robe  and  diadem. 

Lord  Beaconsfield's  resources  of  dextrous  charla- 
tanism show  no  signs  of  exhaustion.     He  is  justified 


192  LORD    BEACONSFIELD. 

in  a  contemptuous  confidence  in  the  gullibility  of  this 
nation,  which  allows  him  to  govern  it.  The  senti- 
ment which  his  own  Hebrew  Besso  inscribed  on  the 
wall  of  his  house  when  Contarini  Fleming  visited  it, 
and  which  was  to  be  seen  there  still,  when  Tancred 
made  his  pilgrimage  to  Jerusalem,  declared — "  I  will 
not  believe  in  those  who  must  believe  in  me."  It 
was  intended  to  express  the  attitude  of  Judaism  to 
Christianity.  With  very  little  alteration,  it  will  prob- 
ably convey  Lord  Beaconsfield's  feeling  towards 
his  English  worshippers  and  followers.  He  cannot 
easily  believe  in  those  who  believe  in  him.  In  the 
meantime,  Lord  Beaconsfield's  adventures  are  not 
over  ;  the  last  chapter  of  them  remains  to  be  written. 
The  materials  for  it  are  accumulating,  and  the  story 
may  reach  a  new  point  by  the  time  these  words  are 
before  the  eyes  of  the  reader;  but  it  cannot  yet  be 
fully  told,  nor  its  moral  completely  drawn. 

END. 


